Trapped by Scandal (18 page)

William took the folded sheet from the secretaire and dropped wax on the fold, pressing his signet ring into the hot seal. “I'll give this to André. What would you like for dinner?” He looked down at her bent head, smiling at the
gorgeous richness of its multicolors caught by the fire's light, remembering how many times he had longed to run his fingers through the massed tumble of curls and how many times he had had to refrain from the indulgence. For the next few hours, he could do as he wished.

“Dinner?” Hero turned her head lazily to look up at him. A smile touched her mouth as she read the lascivious gleam in his eye. “I have no particular wishes. Am I to stay the whole night?”

“I will take you back to Grosvenor Square at dawn,” he returned. “Probably no later than any other night you spend gallivanting about town at masquerades and ridottos.”

“Calumny,” she accused, taking another sip of her wine. “In general, I seek my bed before midnight.”

“Truth twister,” he responded, leaving the chamber with a soft laugh.

If she had troubled to think about it, Hero would have been surprised at how easy and relaxed she felt, sitting naked in a strange bedchamber awaiting the return of her lover. It was almost as if she were existing outside herself. And yet, on another plane, she was inhabiting her own body in the fullest sense. Her skin still tingled, her loins still felt spent, used by pleasure, and there was a slight soreness between her thighs. She had been used and devastated by sheer physical joy, and it was the most wondrous feeling imaginable.

But she still had no answer to the question, the demand that had begun this evening's wild ride of lust. She still felt as if her natural desires, her passion, her love for this man, a love she could not as yet properly admit, were
trapped by some unknown and untellable secret, which only William held.

The fire's warmth lulled her as she sipped the golden wine, and her eyelids drooped, but she came to with a jolt as the door opened and a cold draft flickered against her bared back.

“Forgive me. It's much cooler on the landing.” William closed the door smartly behind him. He set down the tray he was carrrying on a side table beside Hero's ottoman. “I thought we might start with some oysters.”

Hero examined the large oval platter of opened oysters, their succulent pale gray offering resting against the pearly glimmer of their shells.

“André has taken your letter, so I shucked them myself.” William turned up his palms ruefully. “They are the very devil, I had forgotten how difficult. But madam, nothing is too much trouble for you.” He knelt beside her ottoman and lifted one of the largest shells, holding it to her lips.

Hero sucked the gleaming flesh from the shell with a practiced movement of her tongue and swallowed the fishy liquid as he tipped it against her mouth. Her eyes closed involuntarily. “Delicious. Allow me to return the favor, My Lord St. Aubery.”

The oysters disappeared, and still Hero wondered if she could ask her question again. She felt that William was deliberately distracting her, which, she had to admit, was working beautifully. But it left her with an empty feeling lurking somewhere beneath the glorious and seemingly endless peaks of that long evening in the firelit chamber on Half Moon Street.

SEVENTEEN

I
t was still dark, although the first faint glimmer of gray showed in the eastern sky when William and Hero left the house on Half Moon Street. The streets were still quiet, although it would not be long before the first costermongers, milkmaids, and barrow boys made their appearance. At the end of Half Moon Street on the corner of Curzon Street, a carriage waited, bearing the Bruton arms. Hero didn't inquire how or when the mews had been told to send the carriage for her at precisely four thirty in the morning. William would have arranged it in his usual seamless fashion.

He handed her up into the carriage and stood for a moment, one boot resting on the footstep, his arm along the edge of the open window. “I'll see you this evening.” His eyes still held the residual glow of the passionate hours they had just passed.

“At seven o'clock.” She smiled, leaned through the window, and lightly kissed his mouth.

“Go,” he said, stepping back hastily, casting a quick glance around.

Hero grinned. “Oh, so cautious,” she mocked. “Every right-thinking person is tucked up in his bed at this hour.”

He said nothing, but his face closed, and he turned away without a further gesture of farewell. The coachman's whip cracked, and the carriage moved off in the direction of Grosvenor Square.

William walked home, wondering what hold Hero had over him that she could so easily overcome his hard-fought resolution. His fears for her reputation were one thing, but now he had Everard Dubois to add to the equation. If the Lizard was playing in the open now, it would be to disarm his quarry. But William couldn't see how his old enemy thought he could do that just by making himself visible. But he was up to something, and that meant that William and every one of his associates would have to be even more alert. And that included Hero, since, as seemed obvious, he had so spectacularly failed to exclude her from his life.

Every inch of him was resistant to involving her in that world again, whatever her brother had said, but the minute he took her into his confidence, she would see herself as involved, and he knew her well enough to know that she would embrace that involvement with open arms. But if he said nothing to her, she would continue to behave with her habitual reckless disregard for convention and would inevitably come to the notice of the Lizard and his cohorts.

His alternative, of course, was to follow Alec's advice and make use of her as he had done in Paris. If he had to take her into his confidence, then why not make the most of what she had to offer? Not only was she clever, resourceful, careful when she recognized the need to be, and quick to respond to danger, but she was perfectly
placed to do what needed to be done. On the whole, he decided, she would be safer being a part of his enterprise. There was no knowing what she would get mired in if left to her own devices, and at least if she was working with him, she would accept his leadership.

He would put her to work at a task that would be quite natural for her, would be perfectly safe, and should keep her satisfied and out of trouble.

His mind made up, his step lightened as he reached Half Moon Street in search of his bed. He was in dire need of a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Hero greeted the night doorman sleepily as he let her into the darkened house. It was still too early for any of the household to be up. She hurried up to her own bedchamber, yawning. The candle was burning low on the bedside table when she entered the chamber, and the fire was little more than glowing embers. She lit a fresh candle from the guttering one and threw more wood on the fire.

Her nightgown was lying ready for her on the bed, the heavy damask curtains drawn across the long windows. The water in the ewer was, of course, cold. Her note to Alec had asked him to tell Maisie, her maid, not to wait up for her, and Hero knew the girl would not disturb her until she rang for her in the morning. For the moment, all she wanted was sleep. Her body ached in the most pleasurable way, but her limbs were heavy and resistant to any kind of energetic movement. She discarded her gown, chemise, and petticoats and dropped the nightgown over
her head. Ordinarily, she would have washed her face and brushed her teeth and hair, but such activities were beyond her. She fell into bed and was almost instantly asleep.

The sun was high when Hero awoke, a gleam of light creeping through a crack in the curtains. She swam upwards slowly from the depths of a dreamless sleep and lay reordering her thoughts before lazily reaching for the bell pull beside the bed.

“Good morning, my lady.” Maisie came in with her usual sunny smile and a silver tray with a pot of hot chocolate, a plate of bread and butter, and a small pile of billets-doux. She set the tray on the bedside table and went to draw back the curtains. Golden autumn sunlight flooded across the rich Aubusson carpet, and Hero hitched herself up against the pillows, looking around rather blearily.

“Good morning, Maisie. Is it still morning?”

“Just after eleven, madam.” Maisie poured a fragrant stream of hot chocolate into the wide, shallow porcelain cup. “You must've come in late.” She handed the cup to Hero and picked up the discarded clothes from the chair where Hero had dropped them.

“About half past four, I think.” Hero sipped her chocolate and opened one of the envelopes the girl had set on the coverlet beside her. She read the contents with a little frown and laid it aside. Her suitors, if they could be called such, tended to be fulsome with their compliments and sometimes overly demanding in their invitations. She picked up a dainty nosegay with a ribbon-attached note and smiled appreciatively. The handwriting belonged to Sir Marcus Gosford, and the nosegay was exactly the deli
cate gesture she had learned to expect from him in the few weeks since they had met in London again after Paris.

He was a lighthearted friend and an easy companion, as comfortable with Hero as he was with Alec. He was always willing to step in as an escort when she needed one, and he had never shown the slightest inclination to move beyond friendship, for which she was grateful. It was pleasantly refreshing to have such a natural, unpressured friendship. He had returned to London almost a year after they had parted on the banks of the Seine after that dreadful journey through the city sewers, and he never said where he had been or what he had been doing. Alec and Hero didn't ask; they knew the rules of that world too well. And somehow Hero had found it impossible to ask him about William. A casual inquiry should have been natural enough, but for some reason, such a question seemed taboo, and he had never been mentioned between them.

Marcus was suggesting a ride to Richmond Park that afternoon, and Hero's first thought was that now she could casually mention that she'd met William again very recently and see if Marcus could throw any light on his presence in London and, even more, any inkling of his peculiar fixation on that bugbear,
reputation
. She had no illusions, however, that Marcus would be any more likely than her brother to tell her anything important without William's permission. And if he hadn't given it to Alec, he wouldn't have given it to Marcus. However, Hero was an eternal optimist, and there was no telling what she might inadvertently discover about his past that might explain some aspect of his present. At the very least, she
would enjoy a long ride in pleasant company on such a glorious day.

“Lay out my riding habit, Maisie. And when I return later this afternoon, I'd like to have a bath before dinner.” She threw aside the covers and got up with a surge of energy, stretching deeply and rolling her shoulders. She sat at the secretaire and penned a quick note of acceptance to Marcus, and informing him of the exciting news in Grosvenor Square. Alec would have sent the obligatory notice of the baby's birth to the
London Gazette
, but Marcus may not have read it as yet.

She folded the note and sealed it, handing it to Maisie. “I'll just go and see how Lady Bruton and the baby are this morning. Could you have this sent to Sir Marcus right away?”

She made her way to Marie Claire's apartments across the landing and knocked. The door was instantly opened by Nan, who gave her erstwhile nurseling a searching, all-seeing look. “Just getting up, are we?” she stated with clear disapproval. “The day's half gone.”

“I didn't get to my bed until this morning, Nan,” Hero protested.

“All this gadding about doesn't do a body any good.”

Hero chuckled and ducked past the elderly woman to go to the bedside. Marie Claire was sitting up, looking rested and happy, her baby nestled against her breast. Hero bent to kiss her sister-in-law and then the baby's soft cheek. “She grows prettier by the minute.”

“Just like her mother.” The adoring comment came
from Alec, who entered the room from his dressing room, toweling his wet hair. “Aren't they beautiful?”

“Utterly,” Hero agreed, perching on the edge of the bed. “Have you only just got up, too?”

“Not a bit of it. I've been out riding since six,” he declared. “It's too beautiful a day to waste.”

“I'll leave you to it,” Nan stated, nodding at the group by the bed. She looked rather self-satisfied, Hero thought, smiling as the nurse left the chamber.

“So you were with William last night?” Alec sat beside her, taking his baby daughter from her mother's arms and cradling her in the crook of his elbow.

“Yes,” she said. “He's coming to dinner tonight.”

“I should like to see him,” Marie Claire said in her soft voice. “We have a question to ask him, do we not, Alec?”

He nodded and brushed the baby's wrinkled forehead with a tip of his finger. “Yes, we do.” He looked at his sister. “Did he talk to you?”

“Not in the way you mean, no,” she said with a shake of her head. “It's so infuriating.”

“Talk about what?” Marie Claire inquired.

“That's the problem, my dear. I don't know,” Hero said. “He's here on some kind of business, the usual kind for him, I suppose. He's told Alec but swore Alec to secrecy, and although I spent all evening and night with him, he told me nothing. I'd like to strangle him sometimes.”

Marie Claire's smile was a little wistful. Even after the close bonds they had forged during their long journey down the river and out of France, she still found the
thought of William and Hero's relationship both puzzling and a little shocking. She was still in awe of William, and Hero's willingness to oppose him whenever it felt right to her remained a source of wonder to Marie Claire's gentler, more accommodating soul. “He probably wants to keep you out of danger,” she ventured.

“Exactly,” Hero responded vehemently. “And I cannot get him to understand that I don't want to be kept out of it. I don't need to be. If I can be useful, then I'd like to be. He has some misguided misgivings about my reputation, would you believe?”

Alec gave a shout of laughter, and even Marie Claire managed a chuckle. “I'd have thought he'd recognize a lost cause when he saw it,” Alec said, getting up to answer a discreet tap at the door. “Aunt Emily, come in. See how well they both are.”

“Oh, I'm so pleased.” Emily wafted in her cloud of shawls and sal volatile to the bedside. “How well you're looking, my dear, and after such an ordeal.” She shook her head with an air of astonishment. “I don't know how you young ladies manage it. Indeed, I don't.”

Hero winked at Marie Claire. “I'm not sure there's any choice once conception has taken place, ma'am.”

“Oh, dear me, Hero, must you talk like that? It's so indecorous.” Emily waved her fan vigorously, as if to banish Hero's outrageous bluntness. “I don't know what your dear mother would have said.”

“I rather think she would have agreed with me,” Hero responded, rising to her feet. “I must go and dress. I'm riding to Richmond with Marcus a bit later.”

Marcus rode up to the doorway precisely at one o'clock, and Hero was watching for him from the salon window. She ran downstairs just as Jackson was crossing the hall to greet the visitor as the footman opened the door.