A smile teased his lips. “There is the flare once more.”
She glared at him. “Take your flare to the devil.”
“But if I do, I must bring you with me. Would you care to begin again, banshee? Where in London were you meant to take the lad, and what was the name of the man who assigned you the villainous task of abducting an innocent child?”
“I already told you his name was Thomas O’Shea. I was meant to meet him at the rail station with the boy, and he was going to gather him from there.” Half lie, half truth.
Carlisle rubbed his hand over his jaw, watching her intently. “Damn you, Bridget O’Malley, I will have the answers I require from you, or you will suffer for it. Until you answer me truthfully, you will remain locked within this chamber. You will only leave when I come to collect you. If you attempt to escape or cozen a servant into allowing you egress, I will not hesitate to deliver your troublesome hide to prison, where I should have taken you immediately upon our return to London. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly.” She was to remain his prisoner, and it did not surprise her. She would use her time alone to study the weaknesses of those around her. She had, by her best guess, little more than a fortnight until Cullen was tried. The newspapers she had last read had been clear in the timeline of the trials of the conspirators. She had already lost far too many weeks in her failed attempt at absconding with the young Duke of Burghly.
“Excellent. I have important matters requiring my attention. I shall leave you alone to reflect upon the wisdom of cooperating with me.” He paused, giving her a sinister look. “And cooperate with me you shall, madam, or I promise you that you will not like the consequences.”
Chapter Eleven
The Duke of Carlisle had forgotten her existence.
Bridget was certain of it.
Days had passed. Precious, dwindling days. Yet, she had not seen him since the day of their ill-fated nuptials. Her last view of him had been his departing back, insufferably broad, the fine white fabric of his shirt stretched indecently taut over his shoulders. He had not even bothered to reclaim his coat and waistcoat.
She had snatched them up, folding them and hiding them neatly amongst her meager possessions. Though she was ashamed to admit it, she had withdrawn them at various interludes, stroking her fingers over the well-constructed garments. Once, she had—to her eternal chagrin—buried her nose in them for a hint of his scent.
Her meals had been delivered to her by her lady’s maid, the click of the lock in the door the only heralding of an arrival. Each time, Bridget held her breath, hoping it would be him. Each time, she was disappointed.
She stared down at the London street below, watching a bevy of carriages pull up to Blayton House. Watching as a parade of lords and ladies in their evening finery flocked up the front stairs, descending upon the home like wealthy, distinguished butterflies. When the click of the lock sounded this time, she spun, prepared to pounce.
Once again, it was not the duke, but his emissary, Wilton, bearing a dinner tray and wearing her customary expression of one part pity, one part guilt. “Good evening, Your Grace.”
“Good evening, Wilton,” she returned the greeting with a sigh. If the woman thought it odd her employer was keeping his new duchess behind a locked door and pretending as if she did not exist, Wilton never revealed it.
She was loyal to a fault. Each occasion upon which Bridget had attempted to glean some information from the domestic, she had held her tongue and excused herself from the chamber. With every turn of the lock in the door, Bridget became increasingly convinced she would have to take action. Her chamber had no means of climbing safely to the street below, and she could not simply leap, for she was on the third floor.
There was no hope for it. She was going to have to cudgel Wilton over the head and steal her keys. She did not want to do it, especially since she had grown rather fond of the woman over the last few days. She dressed Bridget’s hair beautifully, and she always brought her extra hothouse pineapples for breakfast. But it was either leave Wilton untouched on account of the pineapples, or escape, and Bridget knew what her answer must be.
“What has Monsieur Brodeur prepared for dinner this evening?” she asked, her stomach growling at the rich scents wafting to her from the delicacies prepared by Carlisle’s talented French chef. She had never eaten so well in her life, and she had no doubt she never would again.
“Filets de Boeuf Piqué à la Talleyrand. Cocoa tartelettes for dessert with fraises.”
Bridget wandered closer to the delectable food. Her stomach approved, but first, she required some answers. “Tell me, Wilton, what manner of event is happening this evening?”
Wilton averted her gaze, occupying herself by fussing with a serviette. “One of His Grace’s fêtes, I am afraid. We did think they may end, but…”
She trailed off, apparently realizing she had said too much.
Bridget frowned. The Duke of Carlisle did not seem a man given to hosting balls or soirées. And that was the precise moment she noticed Wilton had neglected to replace her key upon the ring at her waist and instead had left it atop the table, calling to Bridget like an abandoned cache of diamonds to a thief.
Perhaps if she was clever enough, she would not need to bludgeon poor Wilton after all. She edged closer to the key and offered the domestic some distraction. “What manner of fête is it? His Grace neglected to mention it to me.”
Wilton’s lips thinned, her countenance going pale. “I am certain it is not in my place to say.”
Bridget was within reach of the key now. “Perhaps you might tell me anyway. There does seem a rather large number of guests arriving.”
“It is not…” Wilton’s words trailed away and she turned her attention back to the idle straightening of Bridget’s plate and utensils.
As she fussed, Bridget slowly covered the key with her hand. “What is it, Wilton? Why do you seem so troubled?”
“No reason at all, Your Grace.” In her agitation, Wilton folded the serviette, then unfolded it.
Bridget palmed the key and slid it down her sleeve. Here was her chance. “I do believe I shall have a bath before sitting down to my dinner, Wilton.”
Wilton turned back to her with a pensive frown, and for a moment Bridget feared she had been caught. “As you wish, Your Grace.”
Bridget waited until the elder woman was out of sight in the bathroom. Waited for the familiar creak of the pipes as hot water was called for. Heard the splash of water in the tub. And then she grabbed her skirts in one hand and raced to the door as quickly as she could. By the time she reached the hall and spun around to close the door, Wilton was rounding the corner. When she saw Bridget, her eyes went wide.
“Your Grace, you cannot—”
With nary a hint of guilt, Bridget snapped the portal shut, withdrew the key, and locked it. After all, Wilton had been acting as her jailer, and at least she hadn’t had to suffer an aching head this way.
Smiling, Bridget made use of the décolletage of her gown by tugging at the ribbon trim and dropping the key down her chemise. The cool metal landed between her breasts, trapped by the tightness of her corset and unable to move. Her time was running thin. She had no doubt Wilton would make excessive use of the bell pull until someone came to her aid. Which meant if she wanted her freedom to last, she was going to have to make herself disappear.
Leo stood on the periphery of the libidinous gathering he held every week without fail, a whisky he had not bothered to taste in hand. He had spent the last three days living on coffee and the briefings he received from his agents and the men he had planted in the Fenian ranks in England and abroad, trying to make sense of the mystery that was Bridget O’Malley.
His wife.
There was the mocking reminder, never far from his thoughts.
He had married the woman.
But unraveling her secrets was proving as futile as the night was dark.
He shifted, thinking better of leavi
ng his whisky untouched, for his head was thumping, and his skin felt as if it were on fire. The pressure behind his eyes threatened to explode. Even his throat was raw and sore. He gulped down the whisky, stifling a wince at its bite. The room around him seemed to swirl for a moment, until he forced himself to concentrate.
Sleep. He needed it. Ordinarily, when his moods struck him, they did not last more than a day, perhaps two. But there was no time to sleep, and waiting for him on the other side of the door connecting his chamber to hers, lay the woman who had consumed him from the moment he had first seen the inky cloud of her hair and the snapping fire of her eyes.
Ever since he had tasted her lips.
And her cunny. Though not in the way he would like.
Perhaps his true problem was he needed to bed someone. Anyone. Anyone but her. He cast his glance about the chamber, watching his guests laughing, talking, and disappearing into chambers. Music played faintly over the din, but no one came to Blayton House to dance the cursed minuet. They came here for sin.
Leo had not joined in the depravity since he had gone to Harlton Hall—since he had kissed the banshee—and what better night to reclaim his wicked streak? If only his face was not so hot, his body not so aching. He was tired, but despite his need of a warm bed and half a day’s worth of rest to restore himself to an ordinary state, the cockstand in his trousers would not be relieved.
And he had tried.
Thrice daily.
To his shame, he could not spend without thinking of sinking his prick into either her sweet cunny or her pink mouth. Especially her mouth. Releasing his seed down her throat and watching her swallow.
Ah, fuck.
This was not good.
He tipped back his glass of whisky once more to find he had already drained the contents. A lone drop landed on his tongue, a symbol of the futility of his attempts at escapism, it would seem.
The sea of lords and ladies and scoundrels and mistresses shifted. For a moment, his eyes lit upon a familiar figure. Golden hair, swept into a knot, curls framing the sweet, angelic face. Recognition gripped his gut.
Eyes he had gazed into many times before met his.
Jane was here.
His Jane.
No. Ashelford’s Jane. For she had never been Leo’s, regardless of how much he had once loved her, and she had proven so with her defection. She was the Duchess of Ashelford now, walking toward him with contrition making her beautiful face solemn.
Christ, she was just as beautiful as she had always been. But what the devil was she doing here, at one of his notorious fêtes?
She was happily in love with her husband. And Leo had begun these sordid parties initially because of her, but later, as a means of concealing the true nature of his covert work with the League. Appearing the dissolute rakehell tended to keep one from being suspected of running the most elite, clandestine group of men in England.
He was burning up now. His skin prickling with gooseflesh. Part of him was hot as the flames of hell, and part of him was beginning to take chill. He gritted his teeth, looked away from her, and motioned for a servant to refill his whisky. He needed more. If Jane intended to speak to him—if she had dared to enter his territory in such fashion—he needed to numb himself.
And then she stood before him, ethereal in an evening dress of pink silk, smelling of rose petals, just as she always had. “Leo.”
“Your Grace,” he bit out, reminding her they were no longer betrothed. No longer on familiar terms.
Hell, he was not well enough for this unexpected meeting, whatever it was, between them.
“I hope you do not mind my trespass,” she said softly.
For a moment, he did not know if she referred to the fact she had been carrying the Duke of Ashelford’s child whilst promised to him, or if she referred to her presence at Blayton House this evening.
“Of course I mind,” he told her unkindly, for as far as he was concerned, he owed her no benevolence at all. She had betrayed him with another and thrown him over, and all these years later, he still had not forgotten what she had done to him. Though he had moved forward, his anger and hurt had not entirely dissipated. Perhaps they never would. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She flinched as if he had struck her. “I arrived with Lady Edgemont. I had hoped to speak with you.”
The Countess of Edgemont was as lusty as they came. She had six children by, it was rumored, six different lovers, and she was a regular in attendance at Blayton House. He had not realized Jane was now running with such a fast crowd, and he had to admit the knowledge gave him pause.
Still, he was so tired his eyeballs ached, and he was so spent the room seemed to be swaying about him. Refusing to cancel the evening’s festivities had been a grave mistake, and he was beginning to see that now.
“We have nothing more to say to each other,” he told her icily, his voice hoarse from the pain in his throat.
What was the matter with him?
He had grown accustomed to his dark moods. They had been a part of him for as long as he could remember. As were the nights without sleep. It was what made him so good at leading the League. He could throw himself into the work, and it gave him purpose. Meaning. When he could not sleep, he pored over documents, information, intercepted communications, anything he could get his hands on. But this, the feverish burn of his skin, the ache in his head, the pounding inside his skull…Jane…were complications he did not need. Did not want.
“I am sorry, Leo.”
Her gentle contrition nettled him. The chamber about them swirled like the pictures he had seen from France, splotches of color, dreamy swirls that somehow turned flecks of pigment into hushed landscapes and portraits. He had imagined this moment since she had thrown him over for Ashelford. He had fancied her abject repentance would move him.
But it did not.
“I am not sorry,” he returned truthfully. She had shown him who she truly was that day.
Nothing she could do or say all these years later would induce him to ever trust or care for her again. That particular ship had long since sailed, been attacked by a hurricane in the Atlantic, and dragged down to the depths of the sea, never to be seen again.
Strange. Perhaps he was finally freed of Jane’s ghost. Freed as she stood before him. But he was not freed of the confounded illness. The servant had replenished his whisky, and he poured it down his gullet now. Not because he could not face Jane, but because he wanted to stay the throbbing in his skull and drown out the heat threatening to consume him.
It did none of those things.
Instead, it heightened his exhaustion. He was a man who had driven himself beyond his earthly limits, and he knew it. Three days without sleep—or perhaps even four, he could no longer be certain, for after a time they all cobbled together into one loop of infinity—was too many.
“Please, Leo.” Jane placed a hand on his arm. She moved nearer. So did the scent of roses.
Instead of finding familiarity and comfort in it, he felt ill. His gut clenched. He wanted to extricate himself from her, to walk away, but his body had turned into an anchor. It was heavy. He was heavy. And tired. And burning.
Suddenly, in the crowd, as if conjured by his wildest imaginings, appeared one ethereally beautiful face framed by black hair. A pale face with a slight, retroussé nose, a lush pink mouth, bright eyes and thick, long lashes. Her beauty robbed him of breath, hit him in the chest like a blow. Though Jane still stood directly before him, he stared past her, meeting the gaze of the banshee he had wed.
Surely her appearance was a result of the illness that seemed to be assaulting him. For there was no way she could be here, in this chamber, her eyes filled with daunting Irish fury.
“Leo?”
He wanted to remind the Duchess of bloody Ashelford she could not call him by his Christian name. But his mouth did not function, and his tongue seemed dead. He swayed. A grip of tremors assaulted him. Cold through the heat. Such an odd sensation: t
hough his skin was on fire, his body felt as if it had been encased in an ice block. And with his head pounding, his eyes burning, body tired and drained from all the nights he had spent in his study, drinking coffee and poring over documents…
The room swirled. Voices seemed to echo in his head. Bridget was approaching, moving closer in a swirl of angry skirts.
How?
There was Jane again, blinking, beautiful. “Leo?”
Two of her.
Damnation, he was seeing double now. It was what happened only when he reached his limit. When his body had become so drained there was nothing left remaining to give. This had happened before. He could handle it. He could take control of himself.
“Duke?”
Oh, Christ.
There was the second face. The one that haunted him in his waking dreams. The banshee he could not resist. His midnight-haired siren, with the luscious mouth and the sparkling eyes standing before him. Only this time, the eyes shimmered with anger. With malice.
What in the hell was she doing down here? How had she escaped, and what manner of mayhem did she intend to inflict?
He was sure he ought to be concerned enough to collect her and return her to her chamber, but the whisky and the fever—which he was now certain he possessed—had imbued him with an eerie sense of calm.
“Jane,” he said, gesturing, “allow me to introduce you to Her Grace, the Duchess of Carlisle. Darling, this is the Duchess of Ashelford, an old friend.”
Bridget O’Malley’s eyes widened, searching his.
She was his wife, he reminded himself.
He ought to stop thinking of her as anything else. Another shiver shuddered through his body. Cold. He was so bloody frigid now.
But how did that make sense when his skin remained on fire?
Hot and burning. His body heavy. So heavy. Heavy as his eyes, weighed down by all the nights he had eschewed sleep in favor of combating his dark mood.
“Carlisle?” came his wife’s sweet, husky voice. “Are you well?”
Heartless Duke Page 14
