Duke of Pleasure

by Elizabeth Hoyt

  “They know ’oo you are, guv,” Alf said, drinking the rest of her tea, her pretty pink lips pursed. “Don’t you think they’d notice a big bloke like yourself poking about the ’ouse?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her… and realized: she was the bloody Ghost of St Giles. She knew how to fight—he’d fought alongside her—and she made her bread by searching out information. He’d be a fool not to use her. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of it sooner?

  She was a huntress—his huntress.

  He smiled and watched as her eyes widened suspiciously. “Then you’ll do the searching. We’ll take you in as our footman.”

  Iris’s eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline. “Alf’s rather short for a footman, don’t you think?”

  He waved the problem aside without breaking eye contact with Alf. Her big brown eyes held no fear. In fact her lips were slightly parted, her face beginning to flush. Was this how she looked when she was aroused? He felt a responsive pull, low in his gut. A need to reach for her, to draw her into his lap and ravage her mouth.

  He answered Iris, but his words were spoken to Alf. “They won’t be looking very closely at the footmen.”

  Iris had her brows knit and was peering between him and Alf. “But—”

  “It’s Alf or me,” Hugh said as gently as he could.

  The girl smiled faintly, but the blush had traveled down her soft neck. How low did it reach? he wondered. Was she wet right now, thinking of the plans they were making?

  “Very well,” Iris said, her voice clear and abrupt, cutting into the thick silence of the room.

  Alf cleared her throat, breaking their eye contact. She glanced swiftly at Iris and away again before asking him, “’Ow do you plan to go about it?”

  “Carefully.” He sat back. “We’ll need to discuss this, plan how to get in and out of Dowling’s house—and what to do if anything goes wrong. But first we need that information on the house. Can you get it?”

  “Of course.”

  She stood and he was reminded of how petite she was. No wonder she’d been able to pass as a boy for so many years. Both hips and breasts were slight, her frame as slim and delicate as a bird’s. She spent so much time arguing with him and bluntly speaking her mind that it was easy to forget how physically small she was.

  She might be able to fight, but in the end she was a woman.

  Hugh frowned and hesitated for a moment. A gentleman certainly shouldn’t even consider placing a woman in such danger. A gentleman should send her away and tell her he couldn’t use her now that her sex was revealed.

  But she wasn’t a lady, was she? She’d grown up in the worst area of London. More, she’d been doing this work for years before he’d ever met her—and done it quite capably, too.

  And besides. He wasn’t the usual sort of gentleman. That was part of the reason he was good at the behind-the-scenes work the King had him do: he was willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.

  Including using a deviously skilled woman as an agent.

  “I’ll need to know where Dowling keeps his most important papers,” he told her now, having made his decision. “Is it in his bedroom? A study? We’ll need to know the layout of the house as well.”

  “I knows what you need, never fear, guv.” She gave him a far too confident smile as she sauntered to the door. “I’ll start by seeing if Dowling ’as let go of any staff recently. It’s the footman what’s lost ’is job and is feeling ill used that’s the most liable to spill the information we want.”

  She saluted and closed the door of the sitting room behind her, as cocky as ever.

  He just caught himself before calling out to be careful as she left. Instead he took a mouthful of tea. God, he hated the stuff.

  When he looked up again, Iris was sitting straight, her hands folded calmly in her lap. “Alf is a girl, you realize.”

  It was a very good thing he’d already swallowed the tea. “Yes.”

  She raised her brows fractionally. “And yet you send her out to do such dangerous work?”

  He set the tiny china cup down overly hard, avoiding breaking it only by a miracle. “I didn’t know she was a girl when I hired her. Besides, it’s her job. Would you take it from her?”

  Iris pressed her lips together, but she didn’t answer. She was an intelligent woman. She must know that other means of employment in St Giles for a female were more harrowing—and dangerous—than intelligence gathering.

  She leaned forward and refilled her teacup. “Have you thought that she could simply attend the ball as a woman?”

  “I…” He blinked, staring at her.

  Actually he hadn’t thought of Alf in a dress. She’d always been in breeches—both as the Ghost and as a boy.

  Calmly she sipped her tea, eyebrows raised again. “It makes much more sense than trying to pass her off as a footman. Besides, the invitation is for a gentleman and two ladies.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on knees again. “But how can she search a room in a dress?”

  She widened her eyes in a look that reminded him oddly of Alf’s mockery. “How, pray, would a dress hamper her? In fact, a lady wandering the back rooms of the viscount’s residence is less likely to cause suspicion than a footman. She can simply say that she’s looking for the ladies’ withdrawing room. Generally gentlemen don’t question a lady.”

  “But she’s not a lady,” he said softly. “You’ve heard her accent.”

  “She’s a brilliant actress,” Iris said seriously. “You must admit. If she’s been posing as a boy for years, she’s had to be. And she’s obviously intelligent and quick-witted. What makes you think she couldn’t act like a lady if she put her mind to it?”

  Could she, though? He realized suddenly that there’d been no discussion between him and Alf, no acknowledgment that she was a girl.

  Wasn’t that odd?

  “I’m not sure,” he said slowly. It felt a bit dangerous, letting this out in the open. Acknowledging what Alf truly was to the world.

  Or perhaps it was simply dangerous to him to acknowledge that she was female. It made her more real somehow—not just a seductive Ghost he dreamed about at night. Not just a cocky boy who teased him during the day.

  A woman who was both.

  A woman who he knew.

  Who was quick-witted and could hunt with him—he’d never in his wildest dreams conceived of such a creature. She made his heart beat fast. Freed all those wild emotions he thought he’d safely locked away when he’d left England three years ago.

  The mere thought caused sweat to bead at his back.

  He pushed all that to the back of his mind as Iris asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve never seen her dressed as a woman,” he answered curtly.

  She nodded impatiently. “Because she disguises herself as a boy.” Iris paused and looked at him more closely. She’d always been an intuitive female. “That’s not what you mean. You think she considers herself a boy?”

  “No.” His answer was instinctive, but he knew it was correct. After all, she’d made no effort to stop his touching her breasts or her cunny, had reveled in it, in fact. “I know she’s aware she’s a woman. I just have the feeling she might balk at dressing as a woman.”

  She stared at him oddly. “How…?” She shook her head. “Never mind. You’ll just have to ask her, won’t you, and find out?”

  Damn it, he didn’t want to ask it of her. It was too much temptation for him, and he knew Alf herself wouldn’t want to do it.

  And at the same time a part of him—that same part he’d kept so long in shackles—yearned to see her in feminine garb. And Iris was right: Alf was the most qualified of them to search Dowling’s house during the ball.

  Dressed as a lady.

  This was madness.

  Hugh clenched his jaw. “Yes, you’re right.”

  “Then if that’s settled?” She placed her teacup on the table at his nod. “I must be going home so that I can find that invitation
.”

  He stood as she did. “Thank you, Iris.”

  “There’s no need for you to thank me.” She shook her head. “You know that Katherine meant a great deal to me.”

  “I do know, but you mean a great deal to me as well. Your friendship is important to me, never forget that.” He took her hands in his and raised them to his lips, kissing the back of each fondly. This was the woman he meant to make his wife. She was a good friend—both to his late wife with all her many faults—and to him. He needed to regain his balance. To remember that this was what he wanted: friendship, suitability, peaceful contentment. He straightened. “Humor me, then, if I find the need to thank you again.”

  She shook her head affectionately. “You’re positively lethal when you decide to be charming, darling Hugh.”

  He smiled and held out his arm. She took it and he walked with her to the front door and watched as she climbed gracefully into her waiting carriage.

  His smile died as he turned and walked back into the house.

  He’d felt wholly alive last night with Alf—sight, sound, touch, and even smell heightened; he’d been nearly drunk with her in his arms. Thoughtless. Intent only on the moment.

  He was a man used to being in control. To analyzing every movement, every situation. His mind was his sharpest weapon. To be thus disarmed—and so easily—by her was near frightening. He’d chased that heady lust without thought, a visceral reaction—and something he hadn’t done since Katherine. The whole thing made very little sense. His late wife had been a sophisticated, elegant lady, even as a nineteen-year-old maiden. Alf hid her femininity like the most desperate of secrets. She was brash and bold, and seemed to enjoy challenging him in an almost masculine way.

  The two women couldn’t be more dissimilar.

  Yet they provoked a very similar reaction in him: unthinking desire.

  Hugh halted at the bottom of the stairs and took a deep breath.

  He needed to find and defeat the Lords of Chaos with Alf’s help. And when that task was completed, he would send her away—safely out of his life.

  Where she could do neither one of them harm.

  THAT NIGHT ALF sat on the roof of Kyle House and stared at the stars twinkling high above. There were no clouds tonight, just the moon, almost full now, and all those prickling points of light in a vast black velvet sky.

  Beside her the dormer window opened, and she wrinkled her nose, hating that someone had found her special place.

  Then his deep, raspy voice spoke. “Aren’t you cold out here?”

  She turned her head—just enough to see Kyle’s profile. “Nah. Pinched one of the blankets from the bed.”

  “I see.” He cleared his throat. “I understand from Talbot that you were able to collect information on Lord Dowling’s town house.”

  “Aye.” She’d spent the entire day talking to various contacts. “Got a map of the ’ouse, too, from a footman who used to work there.”

  “Well done.”

  His praise made warmth spread through her chest. “’Spect I’ll be able to find ’is study well enough from it. That’s where Dowling keeps most of ’is important papers.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “I want you to accompany me and Lady Jordan to the ball.”

  She squinted, trying to see his expression in the dark, but it was impossible. “Thought that was the plan already, guv.”

  “It was, but we have a slight change. I want you to go as a woman.”

  Her breath caught in her breast, and for a moment it seemed as if she couldn’t inhale. When she was finally able to draw breath, her voice came out hoarsely. “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I…” Thoughts, feelings beat against her chest and her stomach, and she had an urge to simply jump up and fly away across the rooftops. Find a place of safety and hide. “Ain’t ever been a woman, guv.”

  Her voice came out a gruff whisper, and she wondered if he could hear her.

  But he did. “How long has it been?”

  “What?”

  “How many years have you dressed as a boy?”

  She turned her head to stare back up at the stars. She swallowed. “Always.”

  “Your mother dressed you as a boy?”

  Her lips curled inward for a moment as she pressed them together. “My ma put a shirt on me. She didn’t call it a boy shirt or a girl shirt, far as I can remember, but then I was very small when she abandoned me.” Sometimes if you stared at the stars long enough you could fool yourself into thinking you could touch them. “After she left me I was in a gang of boys with my friend Ned, ’oo took care of me—taught me to read later on. ’E was the one to put me in boys’ breeches. To protect me. To keep me safe.” She smiled, remembering the scattering of freckles on Ned’s white face, the gap between his front teeth, his shrewd blue eyes. “’E was a smart one, was Ned.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Her smile died.

  “Alf?”

  “’E got to making ’is money other ways when ’e grew older,” she said softly. “Selling ’imself to men paid more than the gang did. ’E’d go out nights and come back in the morning to wherever we was sleeping. One morning ’e just didn’t come back. I was maybe twelve by then. Old enough to take care of myself. So I did.” She freed an arm from the blanket and reached her hand out to the stars, pretending to catch one. “Maybe Ned met a rich bloke to keep ’im permanently. Or maybe ’e found a better way to make ’is way in the world. ’E knew well enough that ’e could leave me and I’d get along all right. Always looking out for me, was Ned.”

  He made a sound, a sort of cut-off word, but then didn’t say anything.

  It was quiet on the rooftop for a bit, just the two of them and the stars and the moon.

  She tucked her arm back in the blanket, drawing it close. “They’re so far away, ain’t they, the stars? But they’re always there, no matter where you might be in the world. You might be miles apart from someone, maybe in a different town or city, even, but if’n they look up, they’ll see the stars, just the same as you. If you think about it, it’s almost as if you’re never really apart, ain’t it?”

  He cleared his throat. “My mother used to show me the stars when I was a boy.”

  She turned her head toward him though she still couldn’t see him. “Really?”

  “Mm, yes.” His voice was almost a purr, it was so soft. “She was an actress in the theater, so her hours were late. I learned to wake myself up when I heard her climbing the stairs. If she was alone, she would let me sit with her as she ate her supper, and if it was a warm night we would sit on her balcony. After she ate and had prepared herself for bed, she would douse the candles and we would look at the stars. I would lean on her shoulder and she would point to the constellations.”

  “Which ones?” Alf whispered. “I never learned ’em.”

  “Never?”

  She shook her head.

  He shoved the window open wider, and then his broad shoulders were squeezing through. He climbed out on the roof, walking gingerly over to where she sat.

  “Careful,” she couldn’t help saying. “You’re bigger than me, guv. You don’t want to go tumbling over your own roof.”

  He snorted and moved behind her to sit down, his legs on either side of her.

  She stiffened. She hadn’t expected him to sit so close. Just last night this big man had held her in his arms. Had touched her as a man does a woman, for the first time in her life. A faint tremor went through her body, almost as if her muscles and skin were reacting to him.

  As if she somehow knew him on an animal level now.

  He pulled himself closer still, so that his broad chest was right up against her back, his big arms surrounding her, a thousand times warmer than any blanket, and she felt her body go all limp, leaning back against him.

  She felt safe. Protected.

  His right arm came around beside her head, pointing straight and a little up
. “Do you see that bright star there a bit above the rooftops?”

  His breath ghosted across her ear, warm and humid in the night air, and she shivered a little. “Yes?”

  “That’s Sirius, the Dog Star.”

  “Dog Star?” She wrinkled her nose at the queer name. “Why’s it called that?”

  “Because it’s part of a larger constellation, Canis Major. That means ‘large dog.’ Sirius is his heart. He’s running upwards, into the sky. To the left of his heart are three small stars in a triangle—his head—behind, his body made of six stars in a rough rectangle, his running legs, and his tail.” He drew each line in the air with his finger.

  She looked and nodded, though she really wasn’t sure how a dog could be made from all those stars. It just looked like a jumble to her. But she liked his voice, so close to her ear. The heat of his body and his words, slow and confident as he taught her.

  “And here,” he continued. “If you look at Sirius and draw a line almost straight up, you’ll see three stars in a row.”

  She leaned a little forward. “Where?”

  “Give me your hand.”

  She wriggled it free from the blanket and put it in his larger hand. He molded her fingers, making her forefinger into a point and wrapping his hand solidly around hers.

  “Now,” he said, his cheek next to hers, so close she could feel the prickle of his stubble. “Follow your hand as I show you. From Sirius, straight up”—he moved both their hands slowly across the night sky—“to the three bright stars in a row.”

  “I see them,” Alf whispered. “Oh, I see them!”

  She felt him grin against her cheek. “That’s Orion the hunter’s belt. He’s the dog’s master. From his belt there are three smaller stars hanging down. Do you see them?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s his dagger. Around Orion’s belt are four stars in a rectangle. Here.” He moved her hand as he pointed to each. “Here. Here. And here. The upper ones are his shoulders, the lower are his knees or his tunic. Do you see?”

  “Mmm,” she murmured. She did, but she was mostly simply listening to his voice again.

  “Now, in front of him he holds his bow.” He traced a curve with her hand.