Her words were meant as a reprimand toward him, and Lucien knew it. But she could not know he did not doubt her. Nor could she know his respect for her capabilities was unparalleled. The woman before him was so much more than a lovely face and an amalgamation of luscious feminine curves. She was more than her kiss, more than the surrender she had given him. Far more than the way she made him feel. She was more than lust. She was also intelligent, brave, and a damned fine agent. Her sex did not matter one whit. She was incomparable.
How could she not see it? How had he not seen it before?
So many words crowded on his tongue, but he could not seem to formulate a proper response. And the Duke of Winchelsea was ever at the ready. He rose, circled his desk, and offered Miss Montgomery his arm. Lucien rose as well.
“Allow me to escort you to dinner, Miss Montgomery?” he asked with the air of a swain.
Devil take it. Lucien found himself scowling as he watched her settle a bright smile upon Winchelsea and take his proffered arm. And then he continued to scowl as Miss Montgomery and Winchelsea presented him their backs. She leaned her head toward the duke’s and laughed.
The sound was beautiful. Melodious. It trilled down his spine. Had she ever laughed like that in his presence? And had she ever smiled at him thus? The bile rose in his throat, along with a vicious, rampaging surge of jealousy.
Three nights ago, he had held this vibrant, beautiful creature in his arms. He had kissed her, stripped her, suckled her nipples. He had brought her to a crashing, body-ravaging spend. And now, he was staring at her elegant back, forced to acknowledge her gown this evening was not at all shapeless, but rather well-fitted and crafted of fine silk, with the spare trim of ribbons and the occasional fringe.
Which was just as well, for this magnificent woman did not require adornments.
His gaze flitted to her waist. She was not wearing a corset this evening either. He could tell. And damn him if his cock didn’t ache and throb at the realization.
“Arden?” she called to him in her honeyed drawl.
He realized, quite belatedly, that Winchelsea and Miss Montgomery had almost reached the door to the study, while he had remained rooted to the spot, misery overtaking him as he watched them go. This, surely, was his punishment for nearly losing his control in her presence. Perhaps she and Winchelsea would marry, and she would bear him a dozen dark-haired babes, who would grow to be seven feet tall and lumber about in an ungainly fashion.
Bloody fucking hell.
He brushed an imaginary speck of lint from his coat sleeve. “Lead the way.”
Dinner proceeded in an unhurried fashion. The courses were uninspired and bland, but even had they been lovingly crafted by the finest French chef, Lucien would not have tasted them. Winchelsea hung upon every word Miss Montgomery spoke. Miss Montgomery avoided Lucien’s gaze and consumed her dinner with considerably less gusto than she had evinced on previous occasions.
She laughed at Winchelsea’s tepid attempts at making sallies.
She spoke fondly of New York City in her melodious drawl.
Lucien could not help but to think about how her sweet pink nipples matched the color of her lips.
“And that is when I fell from the tree,” Miss Montgomery told Winchelsea with a laugh, currently in the midst of regaling him with tales of her girlhood.
She had been an orphan, he reminded himself, thinking once more of a young Miss Montgomery. Had she always been as determined as she was now, with more backbone than most gentlemen he knew? Against his will, he envisioned her as a girl, climbing a tree, intent upon her quarry. And he was charmed, in spite of himself.
The Duke of Winchelsea was smitten too, his glowing admiration for her evident upon his face. “Were you injured, Miss Montgomery?”
“Fortunately, the branch was low, and I landed on my feet,” she concluded, smiling. “But I certainly learned my lesson. From that day on, I have never climbed a tree to pick an apple while wearing skirts.”
Lucien would be willing to wager Lark House, and all his funds, she wore trousers instead. And that the damned woman always landed on her feet.
“An excellent lesson. We may consider ourselves fortunate you survived your apple-picking adventure unscathed and are here with us to tell the tale,” Winchelsea said warmly, chuckling.
Far too warmly. Lucien cut his roast beef with more force than necessary. The sound of his cutlery on the china resonated through the room, sending two pairs of eyes in his direction. At last, that light-blue gaze was upon him.
He forced a smile to his lips, even as a memory of how responsive her mouth was beneath his struck him. He banished it and forced his attention back to their host. “We are very fortunate indeed, Winchelsea.”
Just as fortunate there was a large expanse of dinner table between himself and Miss Montgomery. Else he could not be trusted to avoid hauling her to him for another kiss. His need for her had not abated in the days of distance he had enforced. To his utter horror, he found it had only grown. He had been given a small drop, and he wanted the entire bloody ocean.
Before further conversation could occur, the butler reappeared, bearing a missive for Winchelsea. “Forgive the interruption, sir, but I was informed by the courier that it was urgent.”
“Thank you, Havilock. That will be all for now.” Winchelsea accepted the note and read hastily, his face turning ashen.
The domestic bowed and beat a hasty retreat, gesturing for the footmen presiding over the dinner to accompany him. The door had scarcely closed upon them when Winchelsea looked up from the missive. His countenance was one Lucien recognized well. It was the same expression he had seen on the faces of men witnessing death for the first time; that odd, yet distinct blend of shock, numbness, and fear.
Something terrible had occurred. There was no question of it. Every muscle in Lucien’s body tensed. Out of the periphery of his gaze, he noticed Miss Montgomery’s back stiffen, her shoulders squaring, as if she were preparing herself for a blow. It would seem she was no stranger to such grim scenes as this.
“There have been two explosions this evening,” Winchelsea announced. “They occurred just minutes apart.”
“Where?” Miss Montgomery demanded, rising from her chair, as if she intended to storm to the location and find answers that very instant.
“Praed Street and Charing Cross stations,” he elaborated grimly. “Dozens are feared injured, if not hundreds.”
Shock washed over Lucien, followed closely by rage. Innocent men, women, and children going about their daily lives and performing a task as commonplace as sitting upon a train. And they had been wounded. Damn it.
“It was the Fenians,” he said with certainty, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat. Would their bloodlust know no end? How could these few, dangerous zealots possibly believe they could win Irish Home Rule by the attempted slaughter of men and women going about the business of earning their daily bread?
“There can be no doubt,” Miss Montgomery added.
Winchelsea interrupted. “Speculation is abounding, of course. We cannot be certain as to the cause, until a full investigation occurs. We must take care and maintain objectivity, so that we are certain the conclusion we reach cannot be questioned. The explosions may have been caused by gas.”
“Were it but the one, I would concur,” Lucien said. “Two explosions in one evening, at two different stations, separated by such distance, cannot be the work of an accident.”
Miss Montgomery had been right. Her concerns and observations had been precise.
“It is just as I feared.” Miss Montgomery’s tone was resolute. “McKenna and the Emerald Club are responsible for this. I am certain. McKenna strikes like a snake, fast and deadly. I have witnessed him do it with business associates and club members who did not prove their loyalty sufficiently enough to appease him.”
The man sounded like a viper himself.
“I fear we must put an end to our dinner,” Winchelsea said, stat
ing the obvious. “I need to meet the Scotland Yard director at the Praed Street station. As I understand it, there is much chaos and confusion.”
“Of course.” Lucien bowed. None of them had an appetite for food any longer, not after learning explosions had torn apart railway cars and injured innocent people. “Miss Montgomery and I will take our leave.”
“I arrived by hired hack,” she informed him coolly.
“But now, as my partner, and in this time of great tumult, you shall accompany me. Your safety requires it, would you not say so, Winchelsea?”
“Oh yes,” the duke acquiesced, sounding partly distracted, partly in shock. “Allow Arden to escort you this evening, madam, if you please. It shall do my heart good to know you are safe.”
Miss Montgomery’s expression turned obstinate, and he sensed an argument. He knew her well enough by now to know she did not believe she required a man’s protection. And he also knew she would not wish to be doing anything this evening other than investigating.
They were well-matched in that regard, for he too had every intention of digging for answers. The criminals responsible for these atrocities could still be within their reach, but time was essential.
“Of course she will allow me to escort her,” he answered on her behalf, quirking a brow at her and daring her to challenge him. “Will you not, Miss Montgomery?”
She stared at him, searching his gaze, her pause far longer than necessary. “Of course,” she relented at last, before turning her attention back to Winchelsea. “I would not dream of worrying you, Your Grace.”
The smile she had given Winchelsea made Lucien grit his teeth. But he circled the dinner table and offered her his arm just the same. And then he swallowed his damnable pride, met her gaze, and asked the one question he would have sworn he would never put to his unwanted American partner. “What do you propose we do next?”
Once more, Hazel found herself sitting opposite the Duke of Arden in the confines of his handsome carriage. And once more, his long legs nearly brushed against her skirts. Once more, the carriage smelled of leather and him. The stakes were different, far higher than ever, but her reaction to him was alarmingly the same.
She tried not to stare at the man, truly she did. In the softness of the lamps lighting his carriage, he was an alluring, shadowed mystery her eyes could not help but seek. At the Duke of Winchelsea’s dinner table earlier, he had been cold and aloof, his jaw rigid. And he was no less tense now, given the grim circumstances in which they found themselves.
Her mind swarmed with facts, questions, and plans. She ought to have been sufficiently distracted by the seemingly Herculean task looming ahead of them. But looking anywhere other than upon Arden seemed an impossible feat when she had just suffered three whole days of being deprived of his presence.
He had been evading her.
Yes, she had taken note. On the first day, she had been relieved she would not be forced to look him in the eye following her shameless display in his study. She had devoted herself to combing through her notes and extracting key names, places, and anything else she could. She drafted a dozen assorted lists. She ate each meal in the still-disapproving company of Lady Beaufort, until dinner, when she had a tray delivered to her room, and fell asleep atop the covers long past midnight, only to wake up in the darkness with her face buried in a map of London.
By the second day, she had convinced herself she would apologize for her rash behavior, and promise him it would never be repeated, while urging him to do the same. She spent breakfast stabbing her eggs and sausage and glaring into her coffee. In between exchanging mindless pleasantries with his aunt, she wondered if he would join them, until the butler announced His Grace had already taken his meal an hour earlier. She decided to investigate the railways further on her own, and took great pleasure in wearing the divided skirts which made Lady Beaufort shudder, and hiring hacks all over town.
When the third day had arrived, her inner shame had swelled like a river after a torrent of rain. Arden was not merely too preoccupied with his duties concerning the League to speak with her, and it was blatantly apparent he regretted what had passed between them. So too did she, and though she had spent every lucid hour since her lapse of judgment and reason sternly admonishing herself against it ever happening again, the knowledge he could not bear to face her was nonetheless humiliating.
Her dinner invitation this evening from the Duke of Winchelsea had been a welcome distraction from her isolation. But she would never have accepted had she known Arden would also be in attendance.
“Tell me.” Arden’s deep, decadent baritone severed the silence and her musings both.
She jolted, grinding her molars to keep her cheeks from flushing as she realized she had been staring fixedly at him for Lord knew how long. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your thoughts,” he elaborated. “Tell me what you are thinking. I can see the wheels of your mind working.”
He supposed she was thinking of the bombings and their next step, which she was. But beyond the instinctive decision to visit all hotels surrounding the railway stations where the bombings had occurred, she knew not what step they should take next. And she had just spent the last few minutes ruminating upon him.
This would not do. She forced her thoughts to return to her duty, where they belonged.
“If the perpetrators responsible for the explosions are indeed sent from the Emerald Club, as I suspect they are, then they are Americans,” she said. “They will be staying at hotels under aliases. They will have arrived a few days prior to the day of the attacks. Common ruses in such circumstances is the pretense that one is a traveler, perhaps with family in the area, or a businessman. They will be traveling lightly, but not light enough to cause suspicion.”
“And you believe them to be staying in hotels near where they laid their bombs?” he queried, his expression impenetrable, his tone harsh. “Why would they be so foolish? Surely they would predict the first places to be searched will be those nearest the crimes?”
“Not necessarily,” she countered, grateful her mind could once more be turned toward a more worthy task. This, she reminded herself sternly—detective work—was what she was meant to do. “The hotels nearest to the railway stations will be most convenient. If one is carrying a portmanteau containing explosive powder, and an accompanying device which will explode it, one will not wish to travel far.”
He inclined his head. “That is a fair point. However, would not the fear of discovery trump the fear of a premature explosion, or other such incident?”
“Valid question, Arden,” she acknowledged. “But I have had ample time to acquaint myself with the way McKenna’s mind works. If he is indeed the man behind this latest atrocity, I am convinced he will have sent a select handful of men, all of whom he trusts implicitly. Their primary goal is bomb detonation. A man carrying a bomb will be nervous; it is only natural. The shorter the distance he must travel to plant his bomb and relieve himself of his burden, the better. Therefore, McKenna’s men will have lodged in the hotels nearest to the stations that were targets. If we are fortunate enough, they could even still be in residence.”
Arden nodded. “If they carried out their plan as you suspect, they likely traveled on the railway themselves. The two explosions occurred just minutes apart, but the stations are too far in distance for the bombing to have been carried out by the same man. Having two suspects heightens our chances of at least apprehending one, and if we can get one, we can be certain the others too shall fall. Imprisoned men facing the threat of the gallows have a way of singing like canaries.”
“Precisely.” When he was not being an arrogant oaf, or kissing her senseless upon his desk, she appreciated Arden’s quick wit. “All we need is to capture one of them, and he will lead us to the others, either with his confession to gain better favor for himself, or through the clues on his person and in his lodgings.”
She and Arden could work well as partners, she knew, as long as she cou
ld keep her distance and stop thinking about his lips. Those were the forbidden sorts of thoughts she could not afford to entertain for a fellow agent. Most especially not for the Duke of Arden. And most especially not in this moment. She struck them from her mind, forbidding them to return.
The carriage slowed then, and Arden peered out the window. “We are almost to the Great Western Hotel by Praed Street Station,” he observed with a grim air. “But there is rather a great deal of pandemonium in the streets from the look of it. We may be better served to disembark here and travel the remainder of the distance on foot, since time is of the essence.”
“Then let us do that,” she said, her decision instant. “Every minute which passes us by is one more minute in which the villains responsible for these dastardly acts can escape.”
Arden rapped upon the carriage, bringing them to a halt, and hastily relayed his orders to the driver. In no time, he was springing from the carriage and offering her a hand down as well. Into the sea of chaos they went, her hand firmly in the crook of his arm.
“Stay with me, and follow my lead,” he told her tersely, his jaw tight, as they waded through the stricken men and women who had either been rescued from the afflicted railway or were searching for loved ones who had.
His hand covered hers, holding her tightly to him, and she tried to ignore the spark his touch produced. This was neither the time nor the place for her to indulge in unwanted longing. Through the crowd they went, snippets of conversation reaching her as they made their way.
“Please, sir, have you seen my daughter Miss Jenny Throckmorton? Blonde hair, brown eyes…”
“He was to have been making his way home from his shift, but he never arrived.”
“The name is Tommy Weston. He was to be at the Edgware Road Station, but he never showed.”
“Gas explosion is what they’re saying.”
“Fenians, more like.”
The desperation and fear in those voices as they trickled to her were a lance to her heart. She could not shake the heavy weight of responsibility upon her shoulders as she and Arden made their path to the hotel. She ought to have done something more to prevent this day from happening. But she had not possessed any concrete knowledge of dates and times. Not enough.
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