To Tame a Dangerous Lord (27 page)

*   *   *

“’Tis no surprise you took on this mission,” Will Stokes said to Rayne with a grin. “I told you a life of leisure would never suit you. And you never could sit idly by when a life is at stake, even if that life happens to belong to our sorry excuse for a Regent.”

“I’ll give you no argument on either account,” Rayne replied. This past year he’d been bored beyond tears by the indolent life of a nobleman. And Prinny had indeed made a poor Regent, earning the wrath of his subjects for squandering outrageous sums on his own pleasure—although his dissipation didn’t make him deserving of assassination.

Rayne had spent much of the day setting his investigative plans in motion. Currently he sat in the small parlor of Will’s home, wrapping up the final details of the operation and sharing an excellent port, which he’d recently given Will as a gift to celebrate his promotion to senior Bow Street Runner.

Their deliberations today had gone much as those in the past, except that this was a case of domestic espionage rather than one on foreign soil. They’d worked together for so many years, they could practically read each other’s thoughts. Will was particularly good at disguises, while Rayne’s sheer size and height rendered him too noticeable to fade easily into the background. Therefore he usually supplied the brains and strategy.

Espionage was a game of intrigue and lies, and Rayne had proved particularly adept at it. He’d speedily moved up the ranks of the diplomatic service until he was assigned the most important missions. Then five years ago, at the instigation of Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh, Rayne had formed an elite cadre of agents under his direct command.

He ran the operations himself, directing a score of men and three women at ferreting out French secrets, cultivating informants, supplying bribes to buy intelligence, breaking codes, translating missives from various languages, intercepting couriers, seizing diplomatic dispatches, and tracking enemy spies across the continent, among other objectives.

Now, however, his task was to foil a potential plot against the Prince Regent. The first attempt on Prinny’s life had occurred nearly nine months ago, when two bullets were fired through his carriage window on his way home from opening Parliament. But the shooter had never been apprehended. According to Arden’s information, a secret political association had been formed in the South Midlands with the goal of disrupting the British monarchy. Two men—brothers, actually—were rumored to be the ringleaders of the revolutionaries and were now fomenting discord here in London.

Rayne had once had a vast network of agents to call upon, but those numbers were greatly diminished now, since like Will, many of his former cohorts had found other employment. To carry out this operation, he’d employed Will—temporarily on loan from Bow Street—along with several other men he trusted. For the next fortnight at least, they would keep the suspects under surveillance and look for opportunities to infiltrate their ranks.

“So how are you liking your marriage shackles?” Will asked in an abrupt change of subject. “I confess you gave me a facer when you decided to wed so suddenly.”

Rayne shrugged, surprised only that his friend had waited until now to comment on his impetuous marriage.
“Well enough,” he answered. “It’s too soon to tell, since it has been less than a day.”

“I thought you had set your sights on a very different sort of wife,” Will prodded. “Your new lady hardly seems like a biddable female.”

Rayne couldn’t help but chuckle. “Biddable she is not.”

“Then why did you wed her? Because your grandmama wants you to set up your nursery?”

“That, and because I owed it to Madeline’s father to look after her. You knew David Ellis. She is his daughter.”

“Ah,” Will said with a tone of understanding. Will knew his history with Captain Ellis and so had no trouble grasping his prime rationale for choosing her.

Taking a sip of port, Will cocked his head at Rayne. “Shouldn’t you be with your new bride, then? When Sal and I jumped the broom, we spent our first week in bed. ’Tis how we made our little Harry, in fact.”

Rayne would actually like nothing more than to return to Riverwood and spend the next week in bed with Madeline, but he wouldn’t let himself. He was better off keeping his distance from her for the next several days or more. “I mean to remain here in London for a time to see if we make any progress exposing our plotters.”

Will shook his head good-humoredly. “You always did put duty before pleasure.”

Pleasure was indeed the word that came to mind when he thought of his marriage bed, Rayne reflected, assaulted by a sudden memory of Madeline—the warm silk of her body pressed against his, her flesh soft and yielding under his searching hands and mouth.

His body’s primal reaction to their lovemaking had
been unexpectedly powerful—which was precisely why he would be very wise to stay away from her for a time.

“She must be unlike Mademoiselle Juzet for you to have risked wedding her,” Will remarked.

Reminded uncomfortably of his former love, Rayne felt his jaw tighten involuntarily. Will was one of the few people who knew about his painful brush with betrayal.

Rayne understood why Camille had acted as she did all those years ago. She’d loved her family dearly and her lover even more—and her loyalty to them overshadowed any feelings she’d developed for
him
. When her father had run afoul of Fouché’s deadly secret police and her entire family’s lives were threatened, she’d had no qualms about seducing Rayne so he would bring them safely to England. He would have saved her family anyway had she simply told him the truth. But Camille had made him love her before he’d caught on to her deception.

Afterward, Rayne had redoubled his efforts at his spy career, determined to wipe away the memory of his foolish weakness. He’d sought out the most dangerous missions, taken more personal risks.

He’d never seen Camille again, although he knew that she and her family had returned to France at the war’s end. Yet the experience had changed him significantly. Even though he was no longer bitter now, or even cynical about love, merely guarded, he had no intention of repeating his disastrous mistake.

The comparisons between his first love and his new wife were unavoidable, however. Camille had wanted him for his connections and wealth, which was a chief reason Madeline had appealed to him so strongly. She was very much the opposite of Camille in many respects.

She was not a seductress like Camille either, Rayne thought. He doubted he would have to worry about Madeline taking a lover behind his back. For that reason he was glad for her relative plainness.

And like Camille, Madeline wanted to help her younger brother. Yet she didn’t harbor any devious ulterior motives, plotting and scheming against him all the while.

He’d been too quick to judge Madeline, Rayne again admitted to himself. His suspicions about her relationship with Ackerby were likely unfounded.

Interrupting his musings just then, Will raised his glass in a toast. “I trust you will enjoy wedded bliss as I have, my friend.”

In reply, Rayne took a long swallow of port to finish off his glass. By his own design, wedded bliss was not in his future. But he expected to be fairly content with the bargain he and his new bride had made.

   His sanguinity was short-lived, for when he arrived at his house on Bedford Avenue, Rayne found a terse note from his grandmother summoning him for a command appearance at the Haviland family mansion in Berkeley Square. His mouth curved sardonically as he read her missive. It should not have surprised him to learn Lady Haviland was in town, since her network of social spies was as efficient as his own international one had been.

Anticipating her disapproval of his marriage, Rayne was in no hurry to comply with his summons. Thus, he first took the time to change into evening attire in preparation for dining at Brooks’s Club afterward. When he did call upon his grandmother, he was required to cool
his heels for a quarter of an hour before being admitted upstairs to her bedchamber.

Lady Haviland was lying in her bed in the darkened room, her eyes closed, a damp cloth pressed to her brow. Her color was good, however, with none of the paleness expected of an invalid, so Rayne was easily able to suppress his twinge of guilt. His grandmother’s heart always weakened considerably whenever she wanted leverage over him, as no doubt she did now.

When she finally deigned to open her eyes, he took her hand and carried it gently to his lips. “I regret you are feeling ill enough to take to your bed, Grandmother,” he murmured.

She appraised him with considerable disfavor, and her voice held the same condemnation when she responded. “You know very well that
you
caused this latest heart spell, my boy.”

“If you are suffering renewed palpitations, love, then you should not have made the journey from Brighton alone, particularly since I planned to come and fetch you at week’s end to convey you to Haviland Court.”

“I could not wait till week’s end to confirm the awful truth. How
could
you, Rayne? Marrying that little upstart? I will never be able to hold my head up among the ton again.”

With effort, Rayne refrained from replying as forcefully as he wanted. “I doubt my marriage will diminish your enormous consequence in the least, Grandmother.”

She snatched her hand from his grasp. “How little you know. But the humiliation I face is only a fraction of the reason I am so dismayed. When I met your Miss Ellis this afternoon, she was even worse that I imagined.”

“You called at Riverwood?”

“Certainly I called there. I had to see her for myself. She was unforgivably rude and impertinent.”

Rayne hid an amused grimace. That was one battle he would have enjoyed seeing. Although wishing he’d been there to spare Madeline the confrontation, he imagined she had held her own well enough, even against his indomitable grandmother. Yet it was precisely why he hadn’t told his family about his plans to wed beforehand, fearing they would subject Madeline to their censure.

“Why did you choose her, of all people?” Lady Haviland demanded.

He had a ready answer. “Because I realized that any of the simpering misses I’ve interviewed to date would drive me mad within a week of marriage.”

“You have clearly made a wretched mistake, Rayne. How well do you even know that woman?”

“Well enough. Her father was a good friend of mine.”

He wouldn’t reveal his obligations to David Ellis to his grandmother. He would prefer she think he’d chosen Madeline for her own sake rather than give his relative more ammunition to use against her.

“Madeline is a good match for me, Grandmother. I am proud to call her my wife, and I expect that one day you will be also. But even if not, I trust you will welcome her into the family.”

In response, Lady Haviland raised her hand to her forehead and pressed on the cloth adorning her brow, as if to remind him of her frail condition. “I simply cannot welcome her, Rayne. I doubt I can ever forgive you, either. The only thing I ever asked of you was to marry well, and now you have ruined
everything
.”

“I agreed to wed a genteel young lady so I could sire
an heir, which is exactly what I have done. I have fulfilled my pledge to you, love.”

“You have done nothing of the kind!”

Rayne kept his gaze steady in the face of the dowager’s savage glare. “Have you forgotten why you wanted me to wed in the first place? Your concern was that the Haviland title and fortune not go to my Uncle Clarence.”

“Certainly that concerned me. Clarence is a gamester and a scapegrace, undeserving of the title. But that is not the sole reason I wished you to marry. I was worried for your future, Rayne. And now I worry for your children’s future. You may care little for the nobility of our family bloodline, but I don’t wish my great-grandchildren to be tainted by French blood.”

Rayne felt a muscle tighten in his jaw. “Your objection is duly noted, Grandmother, but I expect this to be the last I hear of it.”

“You do not care at all what I think?”

“Yes, I care. But we have had this discussion before. I agreed to follow your wishes up to a point, but you will not run my life, or dictate whom I will or will not marry.”

Her expression hardened even further. “I suppose I should have expected a disaster of this sort. You always were a stubborn rebel. To think that I was so elated when you promised to give up your wild adventures and settle down.”

Rayne didn’t intend to tell her that he was still pursuing some of the wild adventures she found so objectionable. Nor would he press her to accept Madeline just now. His grandmother needed a little time to adjust to her dashed expectations, and he would give it to her.

Lady Haviland, however, was not ready to abandon her aims, it seemed. Struggling to sit up in bed, she tossed the cloth aside and placed an imploring hand on his arm. “It is not too late for an annulment, Rayne. We can say that you belatedly came to your senses and realized your mistake.”

He eyed her narrowly, wondering if she meant to declare warfare on his new bride. If so, she would quickly have to revise her perspective.

“There will be no annulment, Grandmother,” he replied, his tone final. “You will just have to be satisfied with my choice.”

The flash of fury in her eyes was unmistakable. “I will never be satisfied,” she insisted.

“Then we will forever be at odds.”

Lady Haviland continued to regard him with extreme displeasure before removing her hand from his arm with a derisive sniff. “Until just this moment I never realized how heartless you are, Rayne. The gossips are already sharpening their spiteful tongues, but I will bear the brunt of their venom, not you.”

“You should pay the gossips no mind.”

Her look held scorn. “As if I could. The least you can do is refrain from formally proclaiming your marriage in the
Morning Post
and
Chronicle
. I have no desire to become an object of ridicule in stark black and white.”

He could agree to that, Rayne decided, since he didn’t want Madeline subjected to the savagery of intense public scrutiny. The quieter he kept his marriage, the easier it would be for her to find her bearings as his countess. “Very well, I won’t submit any announcements to the newspapers.”