by Hope Tarr
He’d stopped shaking her, but her teeth still chattered. From fear, he realized. Fear of him.
Sickened, he released her. She flung herself at Jack, burying her head against his chest. Anthony would have given the world to change places with the giant.
Chest heaving, Anthony turned away. His trembling hands, no longer instruments of threat, hung at his sides. “If I leave bruises, ’tis no more than she deserves and a great deal less than Stenton would have done.”
“Oh, I b’aint such a bad sort.” Stenton stepped out of the shadows and into the yellow circle of lamplight. The hazy glow glinted on smooth metal.
Anthony glanced over his shoulder and saw Jack shove Chelsea behind him. Satisfied, he turned back to Stenton. “Don’t tell me you missed us already?”
Smiling, Stenton handed Anthony the knife. “Ye forgot this.”
Anthony’s fingers curved about the handle. “’Twas meant for you to keep. A gift.” A reminder.
Stenton’s gold tooth was the only visible feature of his shadowed face. “Thank ye, but I’ve no shortage o’ me own.” Scraping the side of his boot against a sharp-edged cobble, he added, “Yer a man o’ secrets, b’aint ye, Toeless?”
Sweat gathering between his shoulder blades, Anthony fingered the knife. A sword would serve him far better but no doubt he could hold Stenton off long enough for Jack to get Chelsea safely away. “All men have secrets.”
“Secrets is all well and good…to a point.” Stenton’s smile broadened. “Then they can get downright…dangerous.”
Anthony returned the smile. “Is that a threat?”
The henchman shrugged. “A friendly warning, is all. The last bloke who played me false wound up in the Thames as fish food. I’d ’ate for that t’appen to you. Bess’d ne’er forgive me.”
Chapter Ten
Nine days later
Anthony refolded the newspaper that, for the past hour, he’d pretended to read. Rolling onto his side, he pulled himself up on one elbow and looked over at Chelsea. Dressed in his amber and brown footman’s livery, her spectacular hair concealed beneath a powdered periwig, she lay on her stomach in the center of the Oriental carpet in his study. As usual, she had her nose buried in a book. Today it was a novel by Fanny Burney. She was too engrossed in it to notice his open stare.
The only thing that engrossed him these days was Chelsea.
After leaving Stenton standing on the street corner nine days before, Anthony, Chelsea, and Jack returned to Anthony’s house.
Seated behind his uncle’s polished mahogany desk, Anthony confessed, “Stenton and Luke assaulted a friend of mine a few nights ago. Stenton fled, but I tangled with Luke on Westminster Bridge. He didn’t appear to recognize me tonight, but we may not be so lucky the next time. Jack, can I count on you to lead the watch?”
Ensconced in Anthony’s favorite armchair, Jack snorted. “I were up to hook and snivey when ye was still ’avin’ yer arse wiped.”
Anthony grinned. He was beginning to understand where Chelsea acquired her sometimes colorful vocabulary. “Good. I’ll take the midnight-to-dawn shift when they’ll be least likely to spot me. We’ll need a third person as well, someone they haven’t met yet, who can mingle freely at the Bull without arousing suspicion.”
Jack scratched his jaw. “Like who, milord?”
Anthony girded himself, unsure of how Jack would react to joining forces with the law. “I’ll go to the Bow Street justice first thing in the morning. There’s a runner, Mugglestone, whom my late uncle used on occasion. I’ll request him to assist us. Between the three of us, we should be able to shadow Stenton and Luke’s every move.”
Chelsea had been subdued during the ride home but now her brow crinkled in a frown. “The three of us? You mean four, of course.”
Anthony regarded her over the tips of his steepled fingers. She was determined but then so was he. And he had a plan. “I have a special role in mind for you.”
She softened her scowl. “What kind of role?”
He drew a deep breath. “Strategist.”
“Strategist?” Jack echoed.
Chelsea was studying him with suspicious eyes. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
“You know your brother better than anyone. You’re certain to be the best judge of how he’s likely to react when we barge in. You’re also the only one who would know any special words or phrases that would convey an underlying meaning to him and yet remain undetected by Stenton.”
“I see,” she said, but her voice was skeptical.
Now came the sticky part. “The next few weeks are critical. We must be prepared to strike at any time—day or night. You’ll move in here, of course.”
“The ’ell she will.” Jack’s ham-size fist crashed down onto the top tier of a delicate pie-crust table, nearly knocking it over. “I’d sooner give ’er o’er to the Devil than see ’er turned into a fancy woman by the lecherous likes o’ ye.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Anthony snapped, secretly annoyed by Jack’s acumen. Chelsea would indeed become his “fancy woman,” but not yet. Not until her brother was safe, and she, too, was out of danger. “I’m going to pass her off as my footman.”
“Footman!” She sprang from the sofa. “What has fetching your slippers and lighting your cigars to do with rescuing Robert?”
“Footman be ’anged,” Jack thundered. “Come along, Miss Chelsea. We’re done for ’ere.” He stomped toward the study door, grabbed the knob, and turned it.
The door wouldn’t budge.
Jack swung around. Face contorted and fists dangling at his sides, he growled, “Unlock the bleedin’ door.”
Anthony slipped the key into his coat pocket and rounded the desk as Jack advanced toward him. “Not until we are in agreement.”
He looked beyond Jack to Chelsea. Face drained of color, she stood by the locked door, worrying her hands.
He turned back to Jack. “She’ll be far safer in a house full of servants than she would be on her own.”
“Aye, safe from everybody but ye.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone will think she’s a boy. Were I to be seen anywhere near her, my servants would swear I’d turned pederast. Hardly the reputation a man wants bandied about London.” In a whisper, he added, “After the caper she pulled tonight, do you really trust her not to follow us again?”
That final argument won Jack over.
Chelsea came around eventually, although he suspected she’d agreed to the ruse mainly to keep he and Jack from killing each other.
The first day they were awkward with each other, tiptoeing around the scattered shards of their fractured trust. Then the discoveries began. He preferred dogs, the bigger and sloppier the better, while she was a confirmed cat lover. They were both passionate about horses. Purple was her favorite color, but she’d never dared to wear it. Riding to hounds wasn’t just a bore; it was cruel, she maintained. He admitted he’d never thought beyond the sport, but he’d wager she’d look splendid in purple. Like him, she preferred sitting on the floor to the furniture. And, of course, they both hated spinach.
Chelsea, he was learning, was inordinately easy to be with. She didn’t care about the usual things—social position, money, clothes—that seemed to obsess the other women he knew. When he was with her, he felt under no pressure to impress, to charm, nor even to control. He had only to be himself. After years of wandering, he felt as though he finally were coming to some understanding of who that person might be. Chelsea, however, remained very much a mystery.
“Tell me about your life before you came to London,” he asked suddenly. “Your home, your family.”
A pained look stole over her face, and he immediately regretted his tactlessness. Her parents were dead; her brother kidnapped. Of course she wouldn’t want to dredge up childhood memories.
“You don’t have to answer. Forget I asked. We’ll talk of something else.”
He reached for her, then remembered himself and pulled back
. By tacit agreement, they never touched, although he consumed countless hours making love to her in his mind.
“No, that’s all right. I don’t mind.” She marked her place, and then set the book aside.
“What do you want to know?”
He shrugged. “Nothing in particular. Whatever you’d care to share.” Everything. Absolutely everything. “What were you like as a little girl?”
She laughed, and the soft trill reminded him of the tinging sound that crystal wineglasses made when they met. “A holy terror. Next question.”
He decided to avoid mentioning her brother. “Your parents, were you close to them?”
She nodded, expression sobered. “Very. To Papa especially.”
He’d guessed as much. It was absurd but he felt almost…jealous. “What was he like?”
Tracing the carpet pattern with her forefinger, she replied, “Scholarly, kind, impractical sometimes, but always loving. The best of fathers.”
“And your mother?”
Her thoughtful gaze met his. “She was kind, too, but in a different way. Serene, I suppose. And beautiful. I always wanted to grow up to be like her but then I suppose I never tried terribly hard. Father adored her but then we all did, Robert especially.”
Her eyes clouded. Suddenly he wanted to be the one to banish those clouds, to lead her back into the sunshine. More than he could remember wanting anything. Or anyone.
“I don’t know,” he said, summoning a lazy smile. “You strike me as kind.” His gaze drank in the purity of her profiled features, the elegant column of her throat, the grace of her slender hands folded beneath her chin. “Beautiful, certainly.”
She looked away but not before he glimpsed the pink creeping into her cheeks. “Isn’t it a bit early in the evening for blandishments, milord?”
He smiled. “I’m relieving Mugglestone at midnight, so this is my only chance.”
Already the runner had proven his worth. On his first day of employment, he’d tracked Stenton and Luke back to Newton Street in St. Giles. It seemed the two felons were holed up somewhere in the Rookery, a labyrinth of crumbling tenements, decayed mansion houses, and makeshift shanties. Stenton and Luke could be holding Robert in any one of a hundred or so nooks and crannies. Equipped with a wad of banknotes that Anthony replenished daily, Mugglestone was busy cultivating spies from among the dwellings’ numerous occupants. Soon, Anthony was convinced, he would locate their hiding place, and they would move in to rescue Robert.
In the interim, Chelsea would remain in Anthony’s house. The constant contact was pushing his fragile self-control to its limit. He’d never spent an evening, let alone nine of them, closeted with a beautiful woman and not made love to her. He was certain to be shoring up all kinds of character and fortitude but it was hard, bloody hard, when she was so appealing, so near. Yet the friendship they were forging was a precious gift, the trust they’d rebuilt too fragile to test. Yet.
He smiled at his beautiful tormenter. Toying with the braiding on her jacket, she looked completely guileless. Completely adorable.
“That was as honest a compliment as they come,” he continued, vowing never to let her know—at least, not entirely—what a potent effect she had on him. “And, to prove I’m an evenhanded fellow, I’ll ask you where you inherited that temper of yours.”
She looked at a loss. “I honestly don’t know,” she finally admitted, and they both laughed. “What about you?”
“I come by my temper honestly.” He winked. “Mother’s half-French.”
“Tell me about your family.”
He shrugged, feeling his spine stiffen. “There’s not much to tell. Father’s a typical English gentleman. Staid, conventional.” Disapproving, mainly of me. “A bit bellicose when he’s taken too much port but otherwise not a bad sort, I suppose.”
“Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“I have…had two brothers. They, uh, died years ago.”
“Oh, Anthony, I’m so sorry.”
Her lovely face registered the same sympathy—the same empathy—he’d seen when she’d coaxed him into talking about Albuera. Once again he found himself melting. And confiding.
“Alex was a puny fellow but the sweetest three-year-old imaginable. Ethelred—that’s our elder brother—”
She screwed up her face. “Ethelred?”
“Named after Father. He died the year I went to Eton. Smallpox epidemic.”
“It must have been hard, being away from home and not having the chance to say goodbye?”
She was far too perceptive. Even he hadn’t fully realized how much it hurt to talk about his brothers, even after all these years.
He shifted his shoulders, trying in vain to loosen the tautness. “I have a sister, Hortense. She’s older than I, six-and-thirty. Lives in Horsham with her husband and their brood of five.”
“It must be nice for you, having family so close?”
“I see them once a year, at Christmas. We correspond occasionally, infrequently, really. Otherwise…” He stopped, shocked to hear the bitterness in his voice.
“Oh, I see.”
She couldn’t possibly, but he let it go. How could someone reared in a nurturant cocoon such as the Bellamy household comprehend the glacial politeness that, in his family, substituted for true affection?
But who was he to criticize? Wasn’t he about to continue the family tradition of practical, loveless marriages? With one exception. His children would know that he loved them. He swore it. Until then, the only constant in his life was the warm, vibrant woman at his side.
The hallway clock struck five, and Chelsea got to her knees. “I’d better go.”
“Must you?” He knew she was only going below stairs and yet he felt oddly…bereft.
She stood. “I’m to help in the kitchen and, later tonight, to help Chambers serve. It seems our lord and master has invited some very important guests to dine.”
Alarm bells sounded. Inside his head, a familiar voice hissed: Tell her, idiot. She’s likely to find out in a matter of hours anyway.
“My parents, as a matter of fact,” he admitted, talking over the voice that was cursing him for a coward. “What happened to the footman who usually serves?”
“Geoffrey?”
He nodded, although, apart from his valet and butler, he’d never bothered with learning his servants’ names.
She drifted to his desk. He sat cross-legged on the floor, watching her. Was it his imagination or was she as reluctant to leave as he was to let her?
“He’s abed with the gout. You really should think about hiring more servants.” The corners of her mouth turned up in the impish smile that he’d come to love. “Real ones, starting with a secretary.” She gestured to the piles covering his desktop. “What is all this anyway?”
Inside him a storm was raging but he only shrugged. “Investment reports, old newspapers, account ledgers. No doubt a few stray invitations on the upper stratum.”
“Hem.” She walked to the door. “I’ll see you at dinner, then.”
“Chelsea?” He gained his feet and was beside her in an instant. “Don’t wait at table tonight.”
Her brows lifted. “Why ever not?”
“It’s a small party—” he caught himself, and added, “—just family. Chambers can manage. Make some excuse. Say you have the head cold or something.”
“Don’t be silly.” She pushed open the door and his heart plummeted. “Tonight is my first dinner party as your footman. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
The dinner bell clanged. Chambers, Anthony’s ancient butler, limped toward the parlor to announce that dinner was served. Alone for the first time in hours, Chelsea looked about the chandelier-lit dining room. The last time she’d been in this room, she’d ended the evening by nearly surrendering her virtue—and her heart. She took a deep breath. Just thinking about that night made her knees tremble and her heart skip.
She forced her thoughts to the present. The sideboard w
as crowded with covered dishes as was the linen-draped table. No simple family meal, but a feast. Did the Grenville clan always dine so lavishly or was tonight a special occasion?
The rustle of skirts and a girlish giggle interrupted Chelsea’s thoughts. Anthony’s mother? Surely not? Chelsea folded her hands behind her and waited for the door to the adjoining parlor to open.
Anthony, restored to his customary elegance in starched white neckwear, russet jacket, and nankeen breeches, stepped inside. Even though they’d been living in each other’s pockets for more than a week, she still couldn’t control the tiny thrill that tripped down her spine every time he entered a room. For a few precious seconds their gazes met. He looked quickly away. Then she noticed the pale, elegant blonde on his arm. And the pearl necklace hanging from the girl’s slender white throat.
The fiancée. Chelsea’s heart slammed into her stomach. Just family, Anthony had said. Seething, Chelsea watched the girl’s high forehead for the telltale flicker of recognition.
There was none, and she relaxed fractionally. Telling herself that no one would recognize her—as One-Eyed Jack or Chelsea Bellamy—in her livery and wig, she studied her rival.
Lady Phoebe’s porcelain complexion was tinted with pink, not ashen as it had been when Chelsea had sighted her down the barrel of a pistol. Almond-shaped slate-blue eyes, a delicately molded nose, and small rosebud mouth testified to centuries of breeding. And beauty.
She’s everything you’re not, heckled the voice inside Chelsea’s head.
“Oh, milord, you are wickedly droll,” the girl drawled, slipping into the chair that Anthony held out.
Chelsea suppressed the urge to retch. She turned her attention to the two middle-aged couples completing the party. A fortyish, fair-haired woman disengaged her arm from that of a stout, balding gentleman and slipped into her seat. She might have been Anthony’s fiancée twenty years hence, so close was the resemblance. The second pair was a petite woman with Anthony’s brown eyes and aquiline nose and a florid-featured man in an ill-fitting frock coat.
