by Isobel Carr
In her experience, men had a way of leaving—or the world had a way of taking them away—and she wasn’t going to open herself up to that again. Not after Lyon. Losing Lyon had been almost more than she could bear. Better to end things quickly. She’d promised Dauntry five more nights, and she’d give them to him. But that was all.
She shook her head and urged Mameluke into a ground-eating gallop, putting both Dauntry and the temptation he represented behind her. It was better that she was going home. Better for both of them. Though, at the moment it certainly didn’t feel that way.
If she stayed, if she allowed being with him to become an easy, nightly habit—even for a short time—it might become impossible to give up. He might become impossible to give up. The threat he already posed to her well-ordered world was bad enough.
Chapter Seven
The Angelstone family’s black sheep has returned with no ewe in tow. Apparently he has not been so lucky as to be invited into Mrs E—’s bed.
Tête-à-Tête, 12 October 1788
Philippe froze as the stair creaked. He lifted his foot, gingerly transferred it to the step above the warped one, creeping closer to his goal.
The inn was silent with everyone asleep. Even the innkeeper’s dog had settled before the fire, busy chasing rabbits in its dreams. An utterly useless beast, not worth the scraps to keep it alive.
His heart thumped in his chest. His hands began to shake. He’d pictured this night so many times…rehearsed it, hands locked about the throats of countless whores while their eyes pleaded then bulged, lips snarled and went slack, fingers clawed at him then stilled.
And, though the world was one dead whore the better, it wasn’t enough. The sensation of satisfaction wasn’t even close to what he felt tonight.
The bitch responsible for his father’s death was about to pay. Justice would be served. Six years late, cold as day-old piss, but justice all the same.
He’d stood outside the inn for hours, watching, waiting for her window to go dark, for the busy inn to subside into its nightly torpor. Every house, every inn, every palace had its own rhythm and its own pace, people coming and going like its life’s blood.
Philippe let his breath out in a rush as he reached the hall. This was it. Since he’d come of age he’d been busy hunting her down. Worming his way into her good graces. Lulling her into believing he was just another of her admirers.
Lord knew she had enough of those. She was like a bitch in heat with a kennel full of hounds sniffing around her, all of them eager for a chance at her.
Just as his father had been.
His father had been a whoremongering gamester. A weak man. Easily led astray, but he’d been a gentleman all the same. A peer of France. The whore asleep up these stairs had lured him to his death and nothing had been done about it.
Nothing.
His mother had barely mourned before she’d remarried. Before she’d gone away to live in Nice with her commoner husband. She’d left Philippe behind to be raised by tutors, ruled by guardians and solicitors. She deserved to pay for dishonouring his father’s memory just as the bitch upstairs should pay for his death…but she’d died only a few years after remarrying. Complications after delivering her new husband’s heir.
The continued existence of women such as these was an abomination. An outrage. A festering injustice that burnt as strongly within him today as it had in his fourteen-year-old chest. His father deserved better, and Philippe was going to see that he got it. He could do nothing more to his mother, but he’d see that the Englishwoman paid.
At the end of the hall, an unlocked door let him into a dark room. His quarry lay inside, asleep in the large bed that dominated the room.
Philippe shut the door behind him and crossed to the bed.
The fire in the hearth was nothing but ash. He could only make out the shape of her body beneath the bedclothes. The dark halo of her hair on the pillow. The soft sound of her breaths.
What a shame.
He wanted to see her face, for her to see his. He wanted her to know. Somehow, it wouldn’t be complete if she didn’t know why.
The woman in the bed pushed herself up groggily as he climbed atop her. The horsehair mattress cracked beneath them. She bucked up, opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out as his hands locked around her throat, squeezed in, cutting off her breath.
She clawed at him, bucked her whole body, twisting, trying to throw him off, to catch a precious breath. Philippe tightened his grip, thumbs pushing in.
‘You’re a deceitful whore, Mrs Exley.’
Philippe took a deep breath and flexed his hands. They hurt. Every joint ached. She’d struggled longer than most. And once she’d stopped he’d still held on, unable to let go. He ran one of her curls between his fingers, wrapped it around his hand, and yanked it out. A memento…something to put inside the mourning ring his stepfather had sent him, to replace the lock of his mother’s hair he’d burnt years ago. Something more fitting, a touchstone of his triumph.
He stood, tucked the curl into his pocket, and fumbled with the lamp on the table beside the bed. He tossed the glass guard down beside the body, yanked the wick free, and shook the oil reserve onto the mattress.
The pungent scent of whale oil filled the room, greasy and heavy, almost rancid. He held his breath for a moment, then breathed carefully though his mouth. Even then he could taste it.
Philippe pulled a tinderbox from his pocket, dropped the enclosed char cloth onto the bed, and struck the flint against steel, sending a shower of sparks onto the bed.
The char cloth blazed brightly for a moment, illuminating the dead woman’s auburn hair, and then the bed went up in flames.
The sweetest feeling of bliss rushed though him. Stronger than lust, it quickened his whole body. Skin flushed, prick hard, he slipped from the room and out into the yard where his horse waited.
Chapter Eight
Lord St A— continues to haunt Mrs E—’s house. Another eligible bachelor fallen under her spell.
Tête-à-Tête, 15 October 1788
It was a full three days before Ivo reached London. He was in a rare temper by the time he crossed the threshold of his family’s town house. Annoyance had turned to disbelief. Disbelief to anger.
How could she have ridden away like that?
The more he thought about George’s cavalier behaviour, the more furious he became. And he’d thought of little else during the past few days.
Once the wheel of his curricle was fixed, Ivo had turned south, following the path so lately taken by the object of his obsession.
He should be happy that George had left in a friendly, amicable mood, but whenever reason surfaced, he ruthlessly shoved it down. Reason had nothing to do with his life. Not just at this moment, anyway.
He’d spent the whole drive picturing her lying naked in bed, her secret smile lighting up her face, her hand reaching out to draw him down to her. It was a maddening form of torture. The Sirens’ songs lured sailors to their deaths. George was their equal but that was part of her allure.
She owed him five more nights, and he was damn well going to collect…and then he was going to convince her to give him six more, and so on, until she accepted what he already knew: she was his.
The knocker was off the door, making the house look abandoned and forlorn. He had to drive round to the mews to find anyone. The metal-banded wheels of his curricle rattled across the cobbles and a startled groom hurried out, looking slightly aghast at Ivo’s unheralded appearance.
Ivo handed the reins over and leapt down from his seat, grateful to be stretching his legs after long hours minding the reins. He flapped the skirts of his driving coat, shaking the dust of the road from it, and turned out of the mews, heading back out to Berkeley Square and thence to Broton Street.
His family’s town house was of respectable size, though not so large or imposing as some of its neighbours. The afternoon sun turned the creamy Bath stone it was built of to gold, the darker veins seeming t
o swirl within the stone blocks. His grandfather’s butler silently opened the front door before he knocked. Apparently, word of his arrival had travelled fast.
The man slid back out of his way, his face a mask of well-practiced hauteur. Reeves would never stoop to show surprise. Ivo handed over his driving coat and hat and requested a bath upstairs.
While footmen trailed in and out with steaming buckets to be emptied into the large tub that had been carried out of his dressing room, Ivo stripped. He stood by in his shirt and breeches, fingering the bruise George had left on his shoulder. Hatch puttered about, overseeing the unpacking, even if he, himself, was unable to participate due to his wrenched shoulder.
Hours later, Ivo lounged down to the library, wearing a banyan in place of his coat. It was of simple stencilled calico, without any of the magnificent frogs or coloured lapels that adorned its more stylish brethren. Ivo was secretly amused at the pained look Hatch had given it upon first sight.
He could see their first fight brewing.
Hatch was wasted on him, and they both knew it. The valet was used to serving an extremely fashionable young lord, a veritable tulip, and his new master had absolutely no desire to shine in that arena. And now he’d tossed him from a carriage causing, as Hatch put it, irreparable harm to his person.
The last thing Ivo wanted was to be turned out in a fashionable blue-powdered wig, or encased in a spangled coat. Nor did he wish to mince in the red-heeled shoes of a dandy, or carry a muff. Hatch had practically wept at the sight of Ivo’s muddy boots, and he’d carried away his shirt as if it were a dead rat left on the rug by the kitchen cat.
Ivo blew out a weary breath and settled down at the desk to read his mail. He quickly sorted the massive pile of invitations into past and upcoming and set them to one side. There were several letters from various friends that he would need to attend to right away, and an invitation to dine at his godmother’s house the following night.
What Lady Beverly thought she was doing sending dinner invitations to people who were out of town Ivo hadn’t the slightest idea, but it was nice to arrive to a warm welcome all the same. She’d always been a bit dotty.
He dashed off a note of acceptance and rang for the footman to carry it round, then quickly penned a short letter to his mother, excusing himself from Ashcombe Park for the next several weeks.
Several weeks during which he planned to bring George about to seeing things his way. Into accepting that this was more than a brief affair. She’d have to be convinced, though. Persuaded. Seduced.
God, how he was looking forward to it.
Ivo sealed the letter for his mother with a blob of red wax and set it aside. He sat back in his chair, enjoying the serenity of the library. The comforting smell of vellum, leather, and paper. The scent of the orange oil used to clean the desk and floor. The snap and sizzle of the coal in the grate.
He tried to picture where George was at this exact moment, but kept coming back to her naked, smiling at him from a tousled bed, long limbs gilded by firelight.
The following evening, Ivo walked up the steps of Lady Beverly’s town house just before eight. He handed his coat, hat, and swordstick over to a footman and followed the butler to the drawing room only to find that her ladyship had yet to finish dressing.
Resigned to his fate, he spent an unamusing half-hour listening to her companion, Miss Spence, catalogue all the most recent on dits. He nodded, pretending to listen, then brushed away the bits of powder that drifted from his wig to his sleeve. God, how he hated wigs. Normally he wouldn’t have bothered wearing one, but Lady Bev liked to observe the formalities at her dinner table.
Miss Spence was some sort of distant relation of Lord Beverly’s, and though she was not bright, and rarely entertaining, Lady Beverly had always staunchly claimed she couldn’t do without her.
Ivo couldn’t help but wish she’d at least make the attempt.
He sprang to his feet with particular warmth to greet his godmother’s belated entrance. One more bit of mindless gossip and he was going to say something utterly ungentlemanly to Miss Spence. What did he care who the Prince of Wales was currently cuckolding, or whether Lady Jersey’s sapphires were real?
‘Get off, you young rascal,’ Lady Beverly said, slapping at him with one heavily bejewelled hand. ‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, it’s not polite to maul a lady that way.’ She put a hand out and smoothed her petticoats over her hoops like a hen settling her feathers.
He smiled and swooped in to kiss her again. ‘I know what you tell me, and I know what the ladies like, and the two don’t seem to match up very often.’
‘Devil,’ she scolded, clearly pleased. She slipped her arm though his and marched him off to dinner. ‘Tell me all about what you’ve been up to, my boy. You don’t come see your poor old Aunt Prue often enough anymore.’
‘I know,’ he assured her. ‘I’m an ungrateful child. I’ve been swamped with taking over for Courtenay: the drainage, crop rotation, different breeds of sheep. Not to mention the effort it takes to resist Grandfather’s urging me to begin preparing to run for a seat in the Commons. It’s been exhausting, really.’ He smiled down at his godmother as he helped her into her seat. ‘But I’ve recently decided that the perfection of English ladies just might make it all worthwhile.’
Lady Beverly gave a sharp snort, and Ivo moved quickly to help Miss Spence with her chair. His godmother’s companion sat down heavily, hair powder drifting about her like a flurry of snow. She began to sneeze and Lady Beverly said over her, ‘Last I heard you weren’t making the acquaintance of any ladies. By all reports, you’ve done nothing but cavort with Italian hussies for the past few years.’
Ivo pursed his lips and suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Where did his godmother get her information? Hussies? He’d had one mistress the entire time he’d been there. And they had been entirely circumspect.
Well, they’d been circumspect for Italians. He blew his breath out in a little huff. ‘Mrs Exley, whom I had the good fortune to meet at her father-in-law’s recent shooting party, is most assuredly a lady.’
‘Oh, her,’ Miss Spence chimed in, pausing to sneeze again. ‘I always think of her as one of the men. There’s really not much that’s very ladylike about her.’
Lady Beverly eyed him like a hawk and Ivo gritted his teeth. He shouldn’t have mentioned George. ‘I found her very ladylike, though certainly not missish.’
‘Nothing to be missish about,’ his godmother said, fiddling with the placement of her fork. ‘Mrs Exley’s been making a spectacle of herself since she was plain Miss Glenelg. She was a hoyden during her season, threw herself away on Glendower’s youngest son not a month into it—a delightful boy, but an heiress of her magnitude could have done better. Much better. She could have had Lord Montagu if she’d deigned to notice him—and then she went quite wild when the young man died.’
Ivo tossed back his wine and waited impatiently for the footman to refill it. An alcoholic stupor might be his only hope.
‘Her godfather was just complaining about her antics,’ Miss Spence said, not a hint of malice in her tone for him to complain of. ‘The duke says she’s quite lost to decorum—’
‘Amelia,’ Lady Bev interrupted her, ‘Alençon said no such thing.’
Miss Spence blinked, looking owlishly back and forth from his godmother to him. ‘But he did, Prudence. He said—’
‘He said,’ Lady Bev said, her commanding voice overriding her companion, ‘that her rackety ways left her open to gossip.’
‘Yes, gossip that she’s—’
‘Gossip, nothing more, Amelia.’
‘Well, it’s no wonder,’ Miss Spence insisted. Ivo reached for his once again full wineglass. ‘Running all over the country with that foreigner.’ She made a face, her lips wrinkling up like a prune. ‘Attending gentlemen’s shooting parties. Riding ventre à terre in the park. Filling her house with—’
‘I think we’ve wasted enough o
f our evening on the exploits of Mrs Exley,’ Lady Beverly said as the first course was laid on the table. ‘I want to hear about Italy.’ She turned to Ivo as he was filling his plate with buttered peas. ‘What’s the latest tittle-tattle? Has Hamilton really allowed Mrs Hart to move into his house?’
Ivo smiled at his godmother and took a bite of the rare roast beef that had been set before him. At last they’d moved on to gossip that didn’t potentially concern him.
Ivo arrived to pay a morning call at George’s town house in Upper Brook Street just as a party of young blades was leaving. One of them tipped his hat, while they all looked him over as if he were a hunter for sale at Tattersalls.
He stared them down and they moved aside, the shortest of them brashly rattling his sword.
Like a dog growling to let you know he had teeth. Ivo did his best not to sneer openly. They were little more than boys, cocksure and eager to prove themselves. The one with the ready sword didn’t even look old enough to shave.
It hadn’t been hard to find out where George lived. He’d casually mentioned to Lady Beverly that he wanted to see her about a horse she might be selling and his godmother had jotted down the address for him. She’d smiled, sphinx-like, as she’d done so. He didn’t trust Lady Bev when she smiled like that. It usually meant she was plotting.
He entered the front hall and handed his card to the desiccated butler, glancing about the entry with feigned boredom, hoping he didn’t appear as eager as he felt. His stomach was tight, his whole body tingling with anticipation. To see her. Touch her. Taste her.
It had been four days since he’d done any of those things.
An eternity.
The small hall had dark wood panelling and a highly polished black and rose marble floor. A rather ponderous staircase led up to the first floor. Pocket doors that must let into a ground floor drawing room were closed. Several narrow tables lined one wall, almost completely covered in flower-filled vases. Asleep, blocking the hall that led back into the house, was George’s large, brandy-coloured mastiff. A preposterous pet. The dog didn’t even crack an eye as Ivo entered.
