The Sinful Nights of a Nobleman

by Jillian Hunter

  She closed the door without a sound and returned to the cradle. She could not explain it, perhaps it was because she truly was pregnant, but the sight of Rowan in all his plump innocence lured her irresistibly to gaze upon him.

  A child. She peered over the cradle into Rowan’s blue eyes. His lids drifted downward as if he were fighting sleep. She wondered whether Devon’s baby would be a boy or a girl, and how he would react to the news. Hadn’t he warned her of the possibility on their wedding day? But then he’d grown up in a large family.

  Unexpectedly, Rowan turned his head and looked up at her with an engaging smile. She put her finger to her lips, whispering, “Ssh. We don’t want to wake up your nursemaid. She’s—”

  At the mention of her name Mrs. O’Brien moaned and made a weak attempt to raise her arm. The mug from which she’d been drinking fell from her lap to the floor.

  Jocelyn’s skin crawled with forewarning.

  “Mrs. O’Brien?” she whispered, turning her head toward the woman’s slumped form. “Are you all right?”

  The nursemaid responded with another moan, a deep-throated unnatural quaver of sound. Jocelyn placed her hand instinctively on the cradle, studying the shadows of the room. Something…somebody…was here.

  The gold damask curtains rippled, firelight glinting in the deep folds. Jocelyn edged sideways to stand in front of Rowan’s cradle. The shadowy movement was not, as she’d hoped, her imagination. There was someone by the window. Even if she could back to the door and cry for help, she could not leave the baby and Mrs. O’Brien at the mercy of whoever was hiding in the room.

  She told herself to remain calm.

  Jane or one of her sisters-in-law would come up in a minute to check on Rowan. All the women in the family doted on Grayson’s cherub. No female could resist a Boscastle male.

  And hadn’t Drake promised to send a footman up to stand guard at the door?

  Of course, he’d only just gone, and even if he hurried he’d barely had time to make it down the stairs himself, which left her to defend the baby.

  And the child she carried.

  She stopped her thoughts from running to the horrific. Perhaps this was just a drunken guest who had wandered upstairs by mistake, or who craved a bit of peace. It happened all the time at parties. But no one wandered into a nursery by mistake. There was nothing peaceful about a crying child and vigilant nursemaids.

  “What do you want?” she demanded softly.

  In truth, her throat was so constricted it was a miracle she could get the words out at all, let alone continue to sound as if she possessed any courage.

  The hooded figure detached itself from the curtains. Her heart began to pound as she looked up into the mocking countenance of a man she knew only vaguely from her brother’s stern warnings about avoiding bad company at parties.

  “Captain Thurlew,” she said.

  His name is Matthew Thurlew.

  She detected a glint of metal between the layers of his voluminous sleeve and robe. She could not discern whether it came from a dagger or a pistol. Certainly whatever the source, it was not part of a pious man’s apparel.

  A calm head, she thought, even as her nerves screamed and tension knotted her muscles into immobility. Strange that now, of all times, it was her father’s voice that counseled her. Calm head, girl, when approaching an unbroken horse….Why would it now be her father’s memory that gave her strength? He had always made her feel weak—No, he had wanted to make her feel weak and easily cowed. But he’d failed. His bullying had forced her to stand up for herself.

  “Are you perhaps lost, Captain Thurlew? May I help you find your way?”

  He laughed. “To Babylon? ‘Can I get there by candlelight?’ ”

  She stood her ground, despite the fact that he was moving toward her, that her heart was thundering, and that Rowan had screwed up his face as if he were about to cry. “This is the nursery, Captain.”

  “And that is the nursemaid,” he said with a mocking nod in Mrs. O’Brien’s direction. “See how she sleeps all snores. She drank all her laudanum-laced chocolate like a good girl.”

  Drugged. That explained it. He had drugged Mrs. O’Brien. Unable to stop herself, she glanced back in horror at the child in the crib. He wouldn’t have drugged the baby, would he? Rowan seemed so alert and wakeful.

  “You didn’t—”

  She couldn’t bring herself to ask. She was terrified to even draw his attention to Rowan. Better to lure him out of the room before he took it into his head to harm the helpless Boscastle heir.

  Where was Drake?

  Where was the footman he’d promised?

  Why hadn’t Jane come up to check on her son?

  Why wasn’t Devon here?

  Rowan opened his guileless blue eyes and gurgled. She glanced down at him inadvertently only to look up and find Thurlew directly before her.

  “If you have a grudge against me or my husband, sir,” she managed to whisper, “pray let us remove ourselves to a more comfortable place than the nursery to discuss it.”

  “A grudge?”

  She swallowed. Time. She needed time. “Wasn’t it you who wrote those letters at Alton’s party, Captain?”

  At that moment Mrs. O’Brien released a low unearthly moan and gave a spasmodic kick with her left foot against the firescreen. It wobbled and fell to the hearth with a clatter.

  Thurlew uttered a curse and caught hold of Jocelyn’s bare elbow. Rowan whimpered in protest. She put her free hand back to comfort him, a gesture to which the baby responded with a full-bodied wail that surely would attract the notice of anyone approaching the hallway.

  “You’re right, of course.” Thurlew jerked her away from the cradle. “We’ll have to go somewhere more private, or that devil’s spawn will cry the house down.”

  She was so grateful he seemed disinterested in hurting Rowan that she had little time to fear for herself. “Quickly,” she said. “He’s about to squall—”

  “He’d better not,” he said roughly.

  “He’s going to whether you like it or not.”

  He’d dragged her halfway across the nursery before she realized that his destination was not the door to the formal hallway used by the family.

  In fact, it was only as he forced her against the wall that she perceived a concealed service door behind the curtains where he had been hiding.

  She flinched as the heavy swathe of damask drapery threatened to smother her face.

  A cry of anger, of raw fear rose in her throat.

  “Don’t,” he whispered harshly, shoving her forward.

  She twisted her wrist and hit him across the cheek. His hand lifted; she flinched, thinking he would strike her back. Then the length of rope he’d worn as a belt suddenly looped around her neck to subdue her.

  No longer able to see his face, she demanded indignantly, “What is this thing around my neck? Where are we going? Why would you do this? What—”

  He pushed her, and she stumbled, her senses disoriented, her thoughts arrested.

  For a few moments of blind panic she fought the sense of falling into a void before her heel scraped a hard step; regaining her balance, she realized he was leading her down a private servants’ staircase, which, by the musty smell that offended her nose, had seen little use in recent months.

  He tugged the rope to prod her into moving. “Every royal prince has his secret escape route.”

  She swallowed against the band that constricted her throat. “You’ll hang for this,” she said, her foot catching in the hem of his robe. For good measure she lifted her knee up between his legs, but he drew back, thwarting her hope of disabling him.

  His voice echoed in the hollow void. “Your husband is the one who should hang. His entire family should hang for their abuse of privilege and power.”

  “What did Devon ever do to cause you to hate him?”

  Even as she asked, she remembered the rumors about Devon and Thurlew’s younger brother. The gossip papers ha
d thrived on their pranks, on the mayhem they had unleashed on the city of London, the most prominent incident being her husband’s infamous if fleeting stint as a highwayman. To her recollection a footman had been wounded, but had survived.

  Scandal had ensued, but she didn’t think there had been any other violation of person or property. Devon and his friends had held up the wrong coach in the course of an ill-planned joke. She’d thought the whole affair had blown over.

  “Madam,” he said, his voice without inflection, “you would do better to ask what I intend to do to you than to dwell on the harm your husband has caused.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Devon did not waste a moment stopping to explain to the curious why he was rushing headlong through his brother’s house in the middle of a sophisticated bal masqué. Several of the costumed guests he flew by merely laughed indulgently and stepped aside as if his wild entrance were part of the evening’s entertainment. A few of the older attendants regarded him with fond disgruntlement and murmurs of “those young Boscastle lords.”

  Some appeared too taken aback to react one way or another, especially as four or five footmen came running up behind Lord Devon, one of them brandishing an ancient sword that had only moments before hung upon the wall.

  “A prop,” murmured one white-faced matron, “it must be a stage prop for a surprise performance. This family grows wilder by the year.”

  Not that Devon particularly noticed, or that he would have apologized if he had. He had burst into the house like Hell unleashed, Gabriel at his heels shouting to anyone who would listen, “The bastard is in the house somewhere, costumed as a monk! Stop him if you see him.”

  “Jocelyn went up to the nursery only a few minutes ago,” a female voice responded, and Devon did not spare a glance to see who had spoken. It sounded as if it might have been his sister Chloe. Even if he did not pause to acknowledge her, the information took hold in his mind.

  The nursery. Surely the nursery was the safest place in the entire house. The nursemaid never left Rowan unattended until another servant or a family member, usually Jane, relieved her. It was an absolute rule of the house. Common sense.

  And hadn’t Devon committed Jocelyn to the guard of his intimidating brother Drake? Everyone in the Boscastle household had been afraid of crossing Drake in his younger adult years. He kept telling himself that Drake wouldn’t allow anyone to harm Jocelyn. There was something dark and fierce about Drake.

  All the Boscastles were a little afraid of Drake. All the Boscastle men protected their family, would die doing so.

  As he should have been protecting his wife. She’d been innocent from the start, and he had drawn her into the debts of his own misspent past.

  His thoughts might have run together in these self-tortuous circles indefinitely had Jane not appeared on the stairs before him.

  “Where in God’s name is my wife?” he asked in bewilderment.

  Jane’s distressed face offered no comfort. “Not in the nursery. I think he’s taken her down the back stairs through the servants’ passageway. Weed has already blocked every possible exit, and Drake has gone after him.” She closed her eyes. “So has Grayson.”

  The back stairs. That was the only phrase that he seemed to grasp. He wheeled and someone, dear Jesus, he dimly recognized his brother-in-law Dominic, thrust a silver-mounted pistol at him, retaining the mate in his own hand.

  “The back passageway,” he said. He turned again and found Gabriel in front of him. “Our old escape route.”

  But, of course, neither Gabriel nor Dominic had grown up in this house to understand what he meant, and he had no time to explain.

  In the old days a tunnel had run from the kitchen into the garden to a sunken gate that led into the street from whence the servants could come and go on errands without disturbing those they served.

  Devon knew that it was Grayson’s custom to keep the main armorial gates of the mansion guarded during one of his frequent parties, for it was a common practice for the populace to beg entry or at least a peep into his lavish affairs.

  What he did not know was whether his brother remembered the gate that they had used for secret escapes as children.

  Or whether it would be too late to even matter at all.

  It seemed to Jocelyn that time had not stopped but had merely slowed as if ticking to the beat of an invisible metronome. Her limbs moved as if weighted with lead. Every moment dragged out into an eternity, or perhaps she only wished it so.

  At the end of this horrifying interlude, she would most likely die. The fact that her abductor, a tall menacing blur in the dark named Matthew Thurlew, could take her life on a mad whim, filled her with an anger she could not hide.

  “Drag me like a docile cow to market?” she whispered in the voice of a Bedlam virago. “Place a rope around my neck and drug another innocent woman as she tends to an infant?”

  For a moment he looked a little shocked that a lady could mount such a scathing defense. “I told you to hold your tongue,” he said through his teeth.

  She started to shake, not as much from fear now as from all the emotions she’d been holding inside. Her father might have struggled to subdue the militant streak in her soul, but he had failed. For better or for worse, she was the daughter of a soldier, and she would not go down without a fight.

  They had almost reached the bottom of the staircase. She was unsure where the door below led. She did know, however, that once Thurlew managed to get her outside the house her chances of being rescued, of staying alive, would be greatly diminished. With all the noise of the party, no one would pay any attention to two people outside.

  She heard Thurlew fumbling with the doorknob, the heavy rasp of his breath. She hoped he would find the door locked, although the prospect of being trapped alone with him in a dark stairwell did not bolster her dwindling courage.

  “Open,” he muttered. “O—”

  She swung upward with her elbow and dealt his shoulder a hard blow at the moment the door opened onto an unlit passageway. He did not react at all, nor did she attempt to hit him again. She was more preoccupied with finding a means to escape. They seemed to be standing in a tunnel just beneath the scullery and kitchen. She could feel ash dust beneath her feet.

  Perhaps a servant would be posted nearabouts. She could hear the echo of footsteps and conversation on the floorboards of the chamber above. If she could shout for help, someone might at least be tempted to investigate.

  “No one can hear us down here,” Thurlew said as if he had guessed her thoughts. “Even if anyone ventured into the basement, we are not staying long enough for it to matter to you.”

  Life or death. Revenge. Mercy. The rewards of Heaven, or the threat of Hell. A single moment, a random occurrence could change the entire course of his life. And his wife’s. He should never have left her. Why hadn’t he waited until morning? Why had he been so damned impatient to prove himself a hero when he should have been protecting her?

  He didn’t know what he expected to find when he ran through the garden to the small wooden gate, but it was surely not the sight of Jocelyn being dragged by a rope around her neck. Splotches of dirt or dust besmirched her white costume, and her hair fell in tangles over her shoulder. A rope. Around her beautiful throat.

  He drew to a halt, his blood roaring.

  His mind did not seem to function. Primal instinct took over in a welcome rush. He was aware of only one thought: the man who had hurt and degraded her did not deserve to live. Life or death. Revenge. Mercy. Heaven or Hell. He might not have come in time to save her life, and if he hadn’t—

  He waited until he had a clear shot and no chance of striking her before he raised his arm. A wordless prayer in his heart, he took aim.

  Then in an instinctual act that seemed as vital to him as drawing his next breath, he pulled the trigger, fired, and waited. It seemed as if the moment were suspended in time, as if it took forever for the pistol to discharge.

  He was not ev
en sure Jocelyn realized he was standing behind her, but for a viciously satisfying instant he saw Captain Thurlew turn and look directly into his face. The bullet struck Thurlew in the chest; he knew who had fired the shot. He knew that he was paying the price for what he’d done to Devon’s wife.

  Uttering a soft groan, Thurlew lifted his hand and crumpled to the grass beneath a headless antique statuary of Hermes. Fortuitously, the shadows of the winged god concealed him from Jocelyn’s shocked regard. Devon rushed forward to take her into his arms.

  She looked up into his face with a relief that wrenched his heart. “You came,” she said, raising her hands to pull at the rope around her neck.

  He gripped her to him, finally able to breathe, willing the heat of his body into hers. She felt like a sculpture of ice. He rubbed his large hands over her shoulders and back, telling himself that he had come in time, that he was holding her.

  “I was worried about you,” she whispered, her face still hidden in the hollow of his shoulder.

  “I should have been here,” he said fiercely.

  “But you came,” she whispered back.

  He shook his head, stroking her disheveled hair. “Barely in time.”

  “Devon—”

  He stared up at the sky, fighting to stay in control. He could feel the warmth stealing back into her body, and with it a little of his own cold fear began to melt.

  “Devon,” she said softly, “we can’t stay here.”

  He nodded. Even now she was trying to take care of him. “I should never have left you. And I won’t ever again.”

  She drew back slightly. Her face looked pale, and tears shimmered in her soft brown eyes. “Do you think you killed him? There are people coming.”

  “I don’t give a bloody damn who’s coming,” he said, his voice breaking. “I only care about you.”

  “But if he’s dead, we’ll have to explain why.”

  “I hope to God he’s dead,” he said dispassionately, and meant it.

  “Please, Devon,” she whispered. “I don’t think I can talk to anyone else about this quite yet.”