Worth Any Price (10 page)

Nick took the chair across the desk. “Yes. I found Miss Howard in Hampshire, working as a lady’s companion to the dowager countess of Westcliff.”

“I am acquainted with Lord Westcliff,” Morgan remarked. “A man of honor and good sense—and perhaps the only peer in England who doesn’t equate modernity with coarseness.”

For Morgan, the comments were akin to wildly effusive praise. Nick made a noncommittal grunt,
having little desire to discuss the many virtues of Westcliff. “After tomorrow, I will be ready for new assignments,” he said. “I just have one last matter to clear away.”

Although Nick had expected that Morgan would be pleased by the information—after all, he had been absent for two months—the magistrate received his words in a surprisingly distant manner. “I’ll see if I can find something for you to do. In the meantime—”

“What?” Nick stared at him with open suspicion. The magistrate had never displayed such diffidence before. There was
always
something to be done…unless the entire London underworld had elected to go on leave at the same time Nick had.

Looking as though he wanted to discuss some volatile matter but had not been given permission to do so, Morgan frowned. “You need to visit Sir Ross,” he said abruptly. “There is something that he wants to communicate with you.”

Nick didn’t like the sound of that at all. His suspicious gaze met with Morgan’s. “What the hell does he want?” As one of the few people who knew about Nick’s secret past, Morgan was well aware of the agreement Nick had made three years earlier and the difficulties between him and his esteemed brother-in-law.

“You’ll have to learn that from Sir Ross,” Morgan replied. “And until you do, you will receive no assignments from me.”

“What have I done now?” Nick asked, suspecting
that some kind of punishment was being inflicted on him. Swiftly he mulled over his actions of the past few months. There had been the usual minor infractions, but nothing out of the ordinary. He found it infuriating that Sir Ross, despite his so-called retirement, still had the ability to manipulate him. And Morgan, damn his eyes, would never go against Sir Ross’s wishes.

Amusement flickered in Morgan’s eyes. “To my knowledge, you’ve done nothing wrong, Gentry. I suspect that Sir Ross wishes to discuss your actions at the Barthas house fire.”

Nick scowled. Two months earlier, just before taking the commission from Lord Radnor, he had received an on-duty summons to run to the fashionable quarter near Covent Garden. A fire had started in a private house belonging to Nathaniel Barthas, a rich wine merchant. Being the first constable to arrive on the scene, Nick had been informed by onlookers that no one in the family had been seen to exit the burning building.

Without stopping to think, Nick had dashed inside the inferno. He had found Barthas and his wife on the second floor, overcome by smoke, and their three children crying in another room. After managing to rouse the couple, Nick had ushered them from the home while carrying the three screaming imps beneath his arms and on his back. In what seemed a matter of seconds afterward, the house had exploded into flames, and the roof had caved in.

To Nick’s chagrin, the
Times
had published an extravagant
account of the incident, making him out to be some grand, heroic figure. There had been no end of friendly needling from the other runners, who had adopted expressions of mock worship and exclaimed adoringly whenever he’d entered the public office. To escape the situation, Nick had requested a temporary leave from Bow Street, and Morgan had given it to him without hesitation. Thankfully, the public was possessed of a short memory. During the past eight weeks of Nick’s absence, the story had disappeared, and things had finally returned to normal.

“The damned fire is irrelevant now,” he said brusquely.

“Sir Ross is not of that opinion.”

Nick shook his head in annoyance. “I should have had the sense to stay out of the place.”

“But you didn’t,” Morgan returned. “You went inside, at great peril to yourself. And because of your efforts, five lives were saved. Tell me, Gentry, would you have reacted the same way three years ago?”

Nick kept his face smooth, although the question startled him. He knew the answer at once…no. He would not have seen the value in taking such a risk, when there would have been no material benefit in saving the lives of ordinary people who were of no use to him. He would have let them die, and although it might have bothered him temporarily, he would have found a way to put it out of his mind.
He had changed in some inexplicable way. The realization made him ill at ease.

“Who knows,” he muttered with an insouciant shrug. “And why should it matter to Sir Ross? If I am being summoned so that he can give me a pat on the head for a job well done—”

“It’s more than that.”

Nick scowled. “If you’re not going to explain or give me some work, I’m not going to waste my time sitting here.”

“I will not keep you, then,” the magistrate said equably. “Good day, Gentry.”

Nick headed for the door, paused as he remembered something, and turned back to Morgan. “Before I go, I need to ask a favor. Will you use your influence with the registrar to get a civil license by tomorrow?”

“A marriage license?” The only sign of Morgan’s puzzlement was the subtle narrowing of his eyes. “Doing errands for Lord Radnor, are you? Why does he wish to marry the girl with such haste? And why would he condescend to wed in the registrar’s office, rather than have a church ceremony? Furthermore—”

“The license isn’t for Radnor,” Nick interrupted. The words suddenly stuck in his throat like a handful of thistles. “It’s for me.”

An interminable silence followed as the magistrate worked things out for himself. Finally recovering from an attack of jaw-dropping astonishment,
Morgan fastened his intent gaze on Nick’s reddened face. “Just
whom
are you marrying, Gentry?”

“Miss Howard,” Nick muttered.

A snort of disbelieving laughter escaped the chief magistrate. “Lord Radnor’s bride?” He regarded Nick with mingled amusement and wonder. “My God. She must be an unusual young woman.”

Nick shrugged. “Not really. I’ve just decided that having a wife will be convenient.”

“In some ways, yes,” Morgan said dryly. “In other ways, no. You might have done better to give her to Radnor and find some other woman for yourself. You’ve made a considerable enemy, Gentry.”

“I can handle Radnor.”

Morgan smiled with an amused resignation that annoyed Nick profoundly. “Well, allow me to offer my sincere felicitations. I will notify the superintendent-registrar, and the license will be waiting at his office tomorrow morning. And I urge you to speak to Sir Ross soon thereafter, as his plans will be all the more relevant in light of your marriage.”

“I can hardly wait to hear them,” Nick said sarcastically, making the chief magistrate grin.

Grimly wondering what kind of scheme his manipulative brother-in-law was devising, Nick took his leave of the Bow Street office. The sunny April day had rapidly become overcast, the air turning cool and damp. Maneuvering nimbly through the mass of carriages, wagons, carts, and animals that
clogged the streets, Nick rode away from the river, toward the west. Abruptly Knightsbridge quickly gave way to open country, and enormous stone mansions on large tracts of land replaced the rows of terrace-houses built on neat squares.

As the aggressive outlines of Lord Radnor’s weighty Jacobean mansion loomed before him, Nick spurred his horse to a more urgent gait. The chestnut’s iron shoes crunched steadily over the long graveled drive that led to the house. The last and only time Nick had come here was to accept Radnor’s commission. All business thereafter had been conducted with the earl’s agents, who’d forwarded Nick’s occasional reports to him.

As he felt the small weight of the enameled miniature case in his coat pocket, Nick briefly regretted the fact that he would have to return it to Radnor. He had carried it, stared at it, for two months, and it had become a sort of talisman. The lines of Lottie’s face, the shade of her hair, the sweet curve of her mouth, had been carved into his brain long before he had met her. And yet the likeness—that of a pretty but rather ordinary face—had captured nothing of what made her so desirable. What was it about her that moved him so? Perhaps it was her mixture of fragility and valiance…the intensity that simmered beneath her quiet exterior…the electrifying hints that she possessed a sensuality that rivaled his own.

It made Nick uncomfortable to acknowledge that
his desire for Lottie was no less acute than Radnor’s. And yet they each wanted her for entirely different reasons.

“No expense is too great in my quest to create the perfect woman,”
Radnor had told him, as if Lottie were destined to play Galatea to his Pygmalion. Radnor’s idea of female perfection was something entirely different than Lottie. Why had he fixed his attentions on her, rather than on someone who was far more tractable? It would have been infinitely easier to dominate a woman who was submissive by nature…but perhaps Radnor was irresistibly attracted to the challenge that Lottie presented.

Arriving at the front entranceway, Nick handed the reins of his horse to a servant and slowly made his way up the flight of narrow stone steps. A butler greeted him, asked his business there, and seemed galvanized by Nick’s reply.

“Tell Lord Radnor that I have news about Charlotte Howard.”

“Yes, sir.” The butler left with circumspect haste and returned in one minute. He was slightly out of breath, as if he had run back to the entrance hall. “Lord Radnor will see you at once, Mr. Gentry. If you will follow me, please.”

As the butler led him across the entrance and through a narrow hallway, the mansion seemed to swallow Nick in its dark crimson interiors. It was stifling and poorly lit, though luxuriously appointed. Nick recalled that Radnor was sensitive to light. At their first meeting, he had mentioned that strong illumination
strained his eyes. Now, as then, the windows were shrouded in heavy velvet that obscured every hint of daylight, and the thick carpets muffled all sound as a servant led him deeper into the maze of small compartmented rooms.

Nick was shown to the library. The earl was seated at a mahogany table, his narrow, harshly planed face illuminated by the flame trapped in a nearby lamp.

“Gentry.” Radnor’s avid gaze fastened on him. He did not invite Nick to take a chair, only waved him closer, while the butler retreated and closed the door with an ineffable click. “What news have you for me? Have you located her? I warn you, my patience is nearly at an end.”

Withdrawing a bank draft from his pocket, Nick flattened it on the table, leaving it beside the lamp. “I am returning your money, my lord. Unfortunately I won’t be able to oblige you where Miss Howard is concerned.”

The earl’s fingers curled, sending clawlike shadows across the gleaming table. “You have not found her, then. You have proven yourself to be an inept fool, just like the rest. How can one insolent girl have eluded every man that I have sent to retrieve her?”

Nick smiled casually. “I didn’t say that she had eluded me, my lord. As a matter of fact, I’ve brought her to London with me.”

Radnor bolted from his chair.
“Where is she?”

“That is no longer your concern.” Suddenly Nick
was enjoying himself. “The fact is, Miss Howard has elected to marry another man. It seems that in this case, absence has not made the heart grow fonder.”

“Whom?” was all Radnor seemed to be able to bring himself to ask.

“Me.”

The air around them seemed saturated with poison. Nick had rarely seen such fury on another man’s face. He had no doubt that Radnor would have murdered him had the means been at his disposal. Instead, the earl stared at him with the dawning comprehension that Lottie had been permanently removed from his reach.

“You can’t have her,” Radnor finally whispered, his face veined with murderous choler.

Nick’s reply was just as soft. “You can’t stop me.”

The muscles in the earl’s face twitched in frenzied spasms. “How much do you want? Obviously this is a means to extort money from me…well, you may have it and be damned. Tell me your price.”

“I didn’t come to have my palms greased,” Nick assured him. “The fact is, I want her. And she appears to prefer my offer to yours.” He took the miniature of Lottie from his pocket and sent it skittering across the table, until it spun to a rest beside the earl’s rigid arm. “It seems this is all you’ll ever have of Charlotte Howard, my lord.”

It was obvious that Radnor found the situation incomprehensible, that it was difficult for him to speak through an attack of throat-seizing rage. “You will both suffer for this.”

Nick held his gaze. “No,
you
will suffer, my lord, if you accost Lottie in any way. There will be no communication with her, and no reprisal against her family. She’s under my protection now.” He paused, and felt it necessary to add, “If you understand anything of my history, you won’t take my warning lightly.”

“You ignorant whelp. You dare to warn me away from her? I
created
her. Without my influence, Charlotte would be a bovine in the country with a half-dozen children at her skirts…or spreading her legs for every man who dropped a coin between her breasts. I’ve spent a fortune to make her into something far better than she was ever meant to be.”

“Why don’t you send me a bill?”

“It would beggar you,” Radnor assured him with raw contempt.

“Send it anyway,” Nick invited gently. “I’ll be interested to learn the cost of creating someone.”

He left Radnor sitting in the dark room like a reptile in dire need of sunning.

As Lottie consumed a plate of salty mutton stew, she enjoyed the serene atmosphere of the small dining room, the shining floorboards redolent with beeswax, the sideboard loaded with good white china.

Mrs. Trench appeared in the doorway, a comfortable presence with a sturdy physique, her pleasant expression tempered by a touch of wariness. Lottie sensed the questions in the woman’s mind…the housekeeper was wondering if she was truly going to marry Nick Gentry, if a trick was being played on her, if the match had been made out of love, convenience, or necessity…if Lottie was a figure to be pitied or a force to be reckoned with.

“Is your dinner satisfactory, Miss Howard?”

“Yes, thank you.” Lottie gave her a friendly smile.
“How long have you worked for Mr. Gentry, Mrs. Trench?”

“For three years,” came the ready reply. “Ever since he began working at Bow Street. Sir Ross himself interviewed me for the position, as he wished to help the master establish a proper household. Mr. Gentry is a protégé of Sir Ross’s, you might say.”

“Why would Sir Ross take such an interest in him, I wonder?” Lottie asked, trying to discern if the housekeeper knew about the secret kinship between them.

Mrs. Trench shook her head, seeming genuinely perplexed. “It’s a great mystery, especially as they were once bitter enemies. Many people criticized Sir Ross for bringing Mr. Gentry to Bow Street. But Sir Ross’s judgment has since been proven right. Mr. Gentry is the one they call for when there is the most danger involved. He fears nothing. A cool head and fast feet—that’s what Sir Grant says about him. No one cares to find himself the object of Mr. Gentry’s pursuit.”

“Indeed,” Lottie said dryly, but the sardonic note in her voice escaped the housekeeper.

“A brave, bold man, Mr. Gentry is,” Mrs. Trench continued, “and no one would dispute that now, after the Barthas fire.”

“What fire?”

“You didn’t hear of it? Not long ago, the master saved a wine merchant and his entire family in a house fire. They would have perished for certain,
had Mr. Gentry not rushed in to find them. The
Times
reported the story, and the master was the most talked-about man in London. Why, even the queen commended him and requested that he guard the prince consort at the annual Literary Fund dinner.”

“Mr. Gentry didn’t mention a word about it,” Lottie said, finding it difficult to reconcile the information with what she already knew of him.

It appeared that Mrs. Trench desired to say more, but she kept her silence on the subject. “If you will excuse me, Miss Howard, I will make certain that the guest room has been properly aired and that your things have been put away.”

“Yes, of course.” After finishing her stew, Lottie drank a glass of watered-down wine. Nick Gentry, risking his life for someone else…it was difficult to imagine. How much easier it would have been to think of Gentry as purely a villain. Good Lord, one could ruminate about him for weeks and still not come to a definite conclusion—was he a good man acting as a bad one, or a bad man acting as a good one?

The wine made her drowsy. Eyes half-closed, Lottie leaned back in her chair as a footman appeared to clear the table. A humorless smile grazed the corners of her lips as she reflected on the oddity of marrying one man to avoid marrying another. The prospect of being Mrs. Nick Gentry was far more appealing than continuing to hide from Lord Radnor and his henchmen. Moreover, as Gentry had demonstrated, the arrangement would not be without its pleasures.

As she thought of his hands on her body, heat prickled across her face and deep in her stomach. She couldn’t help remembering the touch of his mouth on her breast. The silky brush of his hair against her inner arms. The long, rough-textured fingers slipping gently over—

“Miss Howard.”

Stiffening, she turned to the door. “Yes, Mrs. Trench?”

“The guest room is ready. If you are finished with your meal, a maid will help you to change from your traveling clothes.”

Lottie nodded in thanks. “I would like a bath, if possible.” Although she did not wish to trouble the maids with the task of running up and down stairs with ewers of hot water, she was dusty and sore from traveling, and she longed to be clean.

“Certainly. Shall you wish to take a shower-bath, miss? Mr. Gentry has installed one in the bathing room upstairs, with piped hot and cold water.”

“Has he?” Lottie was intrigued, as she had heard of many well-to-do households that featured shower-baths, but she had never actually seen one. Even Stony Cross Park, with all its amenities, had not yet been fitted with hot-water piping. “Yes, I would very much like to try it!”

The housekeeper smiled at her enthusiasm. “Harriet will attend you.”

Harriet was a bespectacled young housemaid with a white mobcap covering her dark hair. She was polite but friendly as she showed Lottie to the
upstairs rooms. The dressing and bathing rooms branched off from the largest bedchamber, which clearly belonged to the master of the household. It contained a bed with polished, exposed wooden framework and columns supporting the amber silk canopy above. Although the bed was large, the base was lower than usual, requiring no steps to climb up to the mattress. Stealing a glance at the lavish arrangement of pillows and bolsters, Lottie felt a cramp of nervousness in her stomach. Her attention moved to the walls, which were covered with hand-painted paper featuring Chinese birds and flowers. A porcelain washstand on a tripod foot was positioned beside a tall mahogany wardrobe, topped with a small, square looking glass. It was a handsome and very masculine room.

A subtle fragrance drifted through the air, luring her to investigate. She discovered that the source of the smell was his shaving soap, contained in a marble box on the washstand. As she replaced the top on the box, a bit of soap residue transferred to her fingers, leaving them aromatic and spicy. She had inhaled this scent before, from the warm, slightly prickly skin of Nick Gentry’s jaw.

Good God, in less than a week, she had been wrenched from her hideaway and brought to London…she was standing in a stranger’s bedroom, already familiar with the scent of his body. Suddenly she could no longer be certain of who she was, or where she belonged. Her inner compass had been
damaged somehow, and she was unable to negotiate between what was wrong and what was right.

The maid’s voice broke through her uneasy pondering. “Miss Howard, I’ve started the water. Shall I ‘elp you into the shower-bath? The ‘eat doesn’t last long.”

Obeying the prompting, Lottie ventured into the blue-and-white tiled bathing room, noting the porcelain tub with its exposed pipes, a dressing-stand and a chair, and the shower-bath neatly fitted into the space of a tall but narrow cupboard. The tight confines of the room explained why the washstand remained in the bedchamber.

With Harriet’s help, Lottie undressed quickly and let down her hair. Covered in only a blush, she stepped over the raised threshold of the shower-bath. Viewing the steaming water that poured lavishly from the perforated projection directly overhead, she hesitated. A cold draft curled around her, raising gooseflesh on her skin.

“Go on, miss,” the maid encouraged, seeing her irresolution.

Taking a breath, Lottie walked straight into the fall of water, while the door closed gently behind her. A startling suffusion of heat, a moment of watery blindness, until she maneuvered far enough that her face was no longer directly in the spray. Wiping her streaming eyes with her hands, Lottie laughed in sudden pleasure. “It’s like standing in the rain,” she exclaimed.

The loud spattering of water on tile made the housemaid’s reply inaudible. Standing still, Lottie absorbed the exhilarating sensation, the needling warmth on her back, the steam that saturated her lungs. The door opened a crack, and a bar of soap and a sponge were extended to her. She soaped her hair and body and turned in slow circles, her face uplifted, eyes and mouth tightly closed. Hot water slid everywhere, over her breasts and stomach, down her thighs, between her toes. It was a surprisingly sensual experience, making her feel at once enervated and relaxed. She wanted to stand there for hours. However, all too soon the water began to cool. With a regretful sigh, Lottie stepped away from the shower-stream before she became completely chilled.

“It’s cold now,” she called to Harriet, who twisted the valve outside the door before handing her a towel that had been warmed on the hot-water pipe.

Shivering in the cool air, Lottie blotted her face and hair, and wrapped the towel around herself. “If only it could have lasted a bit longer,” she said wistfully, making Harriet smile.

“In three hours, there will be enough hot water for another, miss.”

Lottie followed the maid to the adjoining dressing room, where her dark blue dress and fresh linens had been set out for her on a narrow daybed. “It would almost be worth marrying Mr. Gentry just for his shower-bath,” she said.

The remark earned a cautiously inquiring glance from Harriet. “It’s true, then, miss? You are going to marry the master?”

“It would seem so.”

It was obvious that the housemaid was eaten up with curiosity but somehow managed to remain respectfully silent. Lottie dropped her wet towel and pulled on her drawers and chemise with modest haste. When she was decently covered, she sat on the velvet-covered daybed and began to tug her thick cotton stockings over her calves. She couldn’t help wondering how many women had bathed and dressed and slept here. Gentry’s bed must be as busy as a brothel. “I suppose you’ve attended quite a few female guests at Mr. Gentry’s home,” she commented, reaching for a garter.

Harriet stunned her by saying, “No, Miss ‘Oward.”

Lottie nearly dropped the garter in surprise. “What?” She raised her brows as she stared at the housemaid. “Surely I am not the first woman that he has brought here.”

“Ye are as far as I know, miss.”

“But that can’t be true.” She paused and added with deliberate bluntness, “I am certain that Mr. Gentry has entertained no less than a harem’s worth in his bedroom.”

The housemaid shook her head. “I’ve never seen any ladies visit the ‘ouse…not in that way. O’ course, after the Barthas fire, many lady admirers
sent letters an’ made calls.” A sly grin touched Harriet’s lips. “The ‘ole street was filled with carriages, an’ poor Mr. Gentry couldn’t go through ‘is own front door, as a crowd waited for ‘im ewery morning.”

“Hmmph.” Lottie fastened her garter neatly over her stocking and reached for the other one. “But he’s never brought a mistress here?”

“Oh, no, miss.”

Evidently Gentry was more scrupulous than she had expected—or at least, he wished to keep his home completely private. It must be that he satisfied his sexual needs at a brothel, or—distasteful thought—perhaps his appetites were base enough that he sought the services of alleyway prostitutes. But he seemed more discerning than that. The way he touched her bespoke the appreciation of a connoisseur rather than a simple brute. Her face flamed, and she tried, as she dressed, to cover her discomfiture by asking further questions of the housemaid.

Lottie quickly discovered that Harriet was far more voluble on the subject of Gentry than Mrs. Trench had been. According to the housemaid, Gentry was something of a mystery even to his own servants, as one never knew what to expect from him. He comported himself like a gentleman in private but did not shrink from the violence of his profession. He could be scathing or kind, brutal or gentle, his moods infinitely mercurial. Like the other Bow Street runners, Gentry kept odd hours and could be summoned at any moment to assist at some disaster,
or investigate a murder, or apprehend a particularly dangerous fugitive. There was little structure or routine to his days, and he did not like to make plans. And curiously, he did not sleep well, and was occasionally tormented by nightmares.

“Nightmares about what?” Lottie asked, fascinated.

“He won’t say, not even to ‘is valet, Dudley. But he makes the most fearsome noises in ‘is sleep sometimes, and then ‘e wakes ‘imself, and won’t go back to bed for the rest o’ the night. Dudley says it must be from things that Mr. Gentry remembers from…” Pausing, Harriet glanced at Lottie warily.

“From his days in the underworld?” Lottie asked calmly. “Yes, I am aware of Mr. Gentry’s criminal past.”

“‘E weren’t a criminal, miss. Not ‘xactly. ‘E was a thief-taker. But ‘e owned a flash house near Fleet Ditch, and ‘e was put in the stone jug a time or two.”

“Imprisoned, you mean?”

Harriet nodded, adding with a boastful note in her voice, “Escaped twice, Mr. Gentry did. They say there’s not a prison that can ‘old ‘im. The second time, ‘e was weighted wiv three ‘undred pounds o’ chains, right in the Devil’s Closet, in the center o’ Newgate. An’ ‘e slipped out an’ shuttered off easy as ye please.”

Lottie was not surprised by the information, knowing what she did of Gentry’s unusual agility, physical strength, and wily nature. Perhaps the image of her soon-to-be husband as a hardened criminal
should have alarmed her, but instead it was oddly reassuring. She was more convinced than ever that he would not be intimidated or easily outwitted by Lord Radnor. He was quite possibly the best protection she could have enlisted.

Yawning, she went with Harriet to the guest room, a room with soft blue walls, an exquisite tent bed enclosed with gray-and-blue curtains, and a large Hepplewhite wardrobe with a row of cunning little drawers for gloves, stockings, and other small necessities. She found her comb in one of the drawers, and she approached the hearth as the housemaid lit a fire in the grate. “Thank you, that is lovely,” she said. “That will be all for now, Harriet.”

“Yes, miss. The bellpull is there, if ye needs anyfing.”

Sitting beside the hearth, Lottie combed her fine, straight hair until the long blond strands were warm from the heat of the fire. From somewhere in the house, a clock chimed four times. As she glanced at the gray sky outside the window and the raindrops that scattered against the glass panes, she shivered. For just a little while, she would push away her concerns about the future. Setting aside the comb, she crawled onto the bed, drew the hangings closed, and rested against the pillows.