Ready Set Rogue

by Manda Collins

  “If that is the case,” he said grimly, “then they will have no reason to be surprised at my intrusion.”

  Serena’s expression told him they would have every reason, but Quill couldn’t afford to let her scruples keep him from the truth.

  As unobtrusively as possible, he slipped out of the drawing room and into the hallway. Spying a footman standing at the ready, he strode over to the man. “Do you know where I might find your mistress and Miss Wareham?” And to his shame the man didn’t look surprised at all. Instead, he laid a finger alongside his nose and winked.

  Good god, he thought in spite of his anxiety. How many lovers had Cassandra had assignations with under her own husband’s nose?

  Still he followed the directions the man gave him and hurried up the stairs to the hall leading to Cassandra’s bedchamber. When he reached the door, he heard the sound of conversation within and, taking a deep breath, he gave a brisk knock and strode inside, as if he had every reason in the world to enter his hostess’s bedchamber without invitation.

  Instead of Ivy and Cassandra deep in conversation about him, however, he found Ivy with a woman he recognized as Elsie, his aunt’s former personal maid.

  He closed his eyes at his folly.

  Of course that was why she’d come up here. His own damnable guilty conscience had made him suspect the worst, when it was all part of the plan he and Ivy had put into place before they even left Beauchamp House earlier in the evening.

  “My lord?” she asked, her eyes wide as he walked over to where she and the maid were standing beside Cassandra’s writing desk. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought you might be ill,” he said with a slight shrug. “I noticed you were gone from the drawing room.”

  Her raised brow told him what she thought about this explanation. But she clearly thought they should discuss his perfidy once they were alone, because she only said, “Well, as you can see, I am quite well.… Go ahead and tell him what you told me, Elsie,” she said with a reassuring nod.

  Looking from one to the other, Elsie seemed to relax a little. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but I was just telling Miss Wareham here that the recipe for the tisane that Lady Celeste liked for the headache, it wasn’t my own.” The maid looked sheepish, and even colored a little at the admission. “My mam was friendly-like with the Rom hereabouts. And she was the one who suggested I go to the old woman there. She gave Mam a tonic that was helpful with me gran’s rheumatism. So when her ladyship was struck down with the headache, I went over to where the camps was and I asked the old woman.”

  “But Elsie didn’t mix the powder herself,” Ivy said with a speaking look. “She got the powder from the gypsies and added water to it.”

  Which, Quill realized, meant that the poison was likely added before Elsie even had the powder in hand. This was a significant breakthrough, and he saw the truth of it in Ivy’s eyes.

  “You’ve been most helpful, Elsie,” Ivy said to the maid, squeezing the girl’s hand. “I cannot thank you enough. And remember, please don’t speak to anyone about what I’ve asked you.”

  The girl nodded. “I never thought it was right the way Lady Celeste died. But if I’d known it was the tisanes, I never would have given them to her.” Tears filled her eyes. “I was only trying to make her feel better. Not kill her.”

  “You could have had no notion that the curative was poisoned, Elsie,” Quill assured her. “I saw your years of loyal service to my aunt, and am sure you meant her no harm.”

  She nodded miserably, then in a soft voice as if reluctant to continue, she said, “I hate to mention it, but if there was any way you could keep from telling Mrs. Northman about my dealings with the encampment? It’s just that Mr. Northman doesn’t hold with the Rom. ’Specially not since they been known to steal ’is sheep from time to time.”

  “He won’t hear about it from us,” Ivy said with a warm smile. “Will he, my lord?”

  “Certainly not,” he agreed.

  Then, the conversation over, there was nothing to do but to step back out into the hallway and brace himself for a scold.

  Which was not long in coming.

  Ivy’s eyes flashed with exasperation as, once they were out of earshot of Elsie and safely ensconced in an alcove near the second-floor landing, she turned on him. “What on earth were you thinking? You might have ruined everything!”

  Chapter 21

  “You are the most exasperating man,” Ivy continued without allowing Quill to speak. “Elsie might very well have refused to tell us anything because of your intrusion. You do realize that, do you not?”

  She had been pleasantly surprised when Mrs. Northman proved so amenable to allowing her a few minutes with Elsie on the pretext of asking for the tisane recipe. It hadn’t been expected. Especially not when she saw how the other lady’s gaze lingered on Quill at dinner. But not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she’d followed her hostess upstairs and entered her bedchamber eagerly, and had been rewarded with Elsie’s confession about the gypsies. If Quill’s arrival had ruined that in any way, she would have been hard pressed to keep from boxing his ears.

  To his credit, however, he did seem to realize the gravity of what he’d done. “I walked into the drawing room and found that both you and Mrs. Northman were nowhere to be found,” he admitted, rubbing a hand over the nape of his neck. “I was concerned.”

  “Because you thought she’d taken me away to regale me with tales of your affair?” Ivy asked with raised brows. She’d guessed at their former relationship almost as soon as they entered the house. There was something predatory about the way the older woman watched him, and she had little trouble adding up the clues.

  “It was a long time ago,” Quill said, his cheeks hot with color. “Years before I even knew of your existence.”

  His sheepishness went a long way toward assuaging her anger. She had been racked with jealousy when she first noticed Mrs. Northman’s proprietary hand on his arm. But it hadn’t taken a few minutes before she recognized Quill’s own discomfort with the other woman’s overtures. Which had gone a long way toward making Ivy feel better about the matter.

  Of course, there was still the fact that she’d had to guess at the thing rather than hear it from his own lips.

  “I should have told you,” he said quietly, as if reading her mind. “I didn’t want to give you a disgust of me so soon into our relationship,” he admitted. “Especially since you were still thinking over my proposal. And the fact that she is now Elsie’s employer, and we needed her permission to question the girl, well, I thought it best to keep my own counsel.”

  Stepping closer, he crowded her into the little alcove until Ivy felt the wall at her back. “You forgive me, don’t you?” he asked, before kissing her gently on the mouth.

  It was difficult to stay angry when he was so sweetly apologetic.

  Drat the man.

  “I’m still thinking it over,” she said with a dignified sniff. Which earned her a kiss in the soft spot beneath her left ear. A kiss that made her toes curl and caused a throb of longing deep within her.

  “I’ll just have to make it up to you,” he said before taking her mouth again, this time all sweetness gone as he slipped his tongue inside and caressed her in a stroke of hot need. Ivy slid her arms up over his shoulders and clasped him to her, her fingers threaded through the silken hair of his nape.

  If there were ever a means of building heaven on earth, she had little doubt that it would be constructed from kisses and sighs and aches the likes of which she’d never imagined were even possible between a man and a woman. The vibration of her groan as he slid his hands up to cover her breasts where they ached within the prison of her stays felt loud to her own ears. But she was too far gone to care. Especially when Quill—clever Quill—tugged down the bodice of her crimson gown and bared her nipple to the cool air. And when his hot mouth closed around it, she would have cried out with the joy of it if he hadn’t placed a hand over her mouth
to quiet her.

  “Well, isn’t this interesting.”

  The sound of an amused voice behind them made Ivy and Quill still at once. Ivy opened her eyes to see Quill’s mouth tight with annoyance, his expression grim. Was he angry at getting caught, or at getting caught by Mrs. Northman, she wondered, her heart still pounding with un-slaked lust.

  He braced himself on the wall behind her and took several deep breaths as he stared down at the floor. She wanted to push him off of her, but a glance down indicated his own excitement at their passion was plainly evident in his evening breeches.

  At least she didn’t have to deal with that, she thought wryly. How uncomfortable it must be to be a man sometimes.

  Still, their interruption was still there. Which she made plain with another conversational sally. “I did wonder if there might be something between you and one of the young ladies, Quill,” said the Squire’s wife. “But my money was on Lady Daphne. She seems more like your type. I certainly would never have guessed this one would pique your interest. What with her carroty hair and, shall we say, buxom figure? I do dislike to call a spade a spade, but really my dear, if you do not push away from the table you’ll be as fat as Prinny.”

  Ivy shoved Quill’s chest so that she could get a closer look at her accuser, but he turned and spoke before she could draw breath. “Jealousy doesn’t become you, Cassandra,” he said coldly. “And I will thank you to keep your opinions about my betrothed to yourself. They are, like the rest of you, unwanted.”

  The other woman’s eyes widened as his words hit their mark. But she fired back easily enough. “Not entirely unwanted,” she said with a cat-in-the-cream-pot smile, “unless I miss my guess about your delightful cousin, Maitland. One can only hope all of him is built to proportion.” She gave a shiver of anticipation that made Ivy’s gorge rise.

  “I can assure you, madam,” the duke drawled as he prowled up behind her, “I would sooner bed a she-wolf than the likes of you. And I daresay the she-wolf would be more affectionate and less grasping.” He surveyed her with his quizzing glass, then added, “I can assure you it is proportional, and I know how to use it. More’s the pity for you.”

  Ivy would have laughed at Mrs. Northman’s expression if the situation weren’t so utterly mortifying. Not only had she been discovered in an embrace by Quill’s former mistress, but now his cousin was there to see the whole contretemps. It was worse than the time her sister had callously revealed Ivy’s crush on her father’s prize pupil. A young man of twenty to her thirteen, and who had laughed heartily upon learning of it. At least there had been no fear of losing her reputation then. This incident had every possibility of making her a byword amongst the neighborhood as well as the ton.

  “If you were hoping for my silence in this matter,” their hostess said in a hostile voice, “then you are sorely mistaken, Lord Kerr. It will take only one letter from me to my sister in London for the rumor of what I just saw to spread far and wide within the ton, not to mention what I will do to this slut’s reputation here on the coast. There will be nowhere for her to go when I’m finished.”

  The vitriol in the matron’s voice sent ice dancing down Ivy’s spine. Quill, however, was having none of it. Stalking over to where Mrs. Northman stood with her hands fisted and her lip curled in anger, he bent so that his face was level with hers. “If I hear so much as a hint of scandal where Miss Wareham is concerned,” he said in a silky tone that might have come from the devil himself, “then I will see to it that you are never admitted into another genteel entertainment again. Not a London drawing room. Not Almack’s. Not the local assembly. Not the subscription ball in Bath. Not even the taproom at the Fox and Pheasant.”

  “It is never a good idea to anger my cousin, Mrs. Northman,” Maitland said pleasantly from her other side. “He might not look it, but he can be quite as ruthless as one of them pagan gods in the classics Miss Wareham knows so much about. And I suppose I should mention, I’ll lend my own social capital—my being a duke and all—to his campaign as well. Cousins, you see. We’re loyal that way.”

  Without a backward glance at their hostess, Quill turned and offered his arm to Ivy. “Come, my dear. I find the company here quite beneath our notice. Much better to get back to Beauchamp House where the air is purer.”

  In a daze, Ivy allowed him to lead her away.

  “What a coil,” Quill said as they strode down the hall away from Mrs. Northman.

  They’d only got as far as the first landing, with Maitland close behind, when just as they passed a large bronze statue of Pan displayed prominently on a faux Greek column, a hidden door behind it opened abruptly, toppling both.

  “Oh, I am sorry,” Elsie gasped from where she stood in the doorway. “I didn’t know—” Her eyes widened as she saw the fallen ornaments. “Why was that there?”

  Quill, who had just missed bearing the brunt of the heavy piece, frowned. “Is it not usually kept here, Elsie?”

  She shook her head. “No, my lord. It’s kept just to the side.” She pointed. “There. One of the housemaids must have moved it today to clean for the party tonight.”

  She turned to Ivy. “You weren’t hurt, were you miss?”

  “No, it missed me.” Ivy shivered. She turned to the others. “Quill? Maitland?”

  “Right as rain,” Maitland said with a shake of his head. “It would take more than a chap in cloven hooves to damage this hard head.”

  Grateful for the duke’s bit of levity, Ivy smiled. “You may go, Elsie. We’ll tidy this up.”

  She watched the girl go, and waited as Quill and Maitland lifted the column and placed the statue back atop it.

  “The carpet is depressed here where it’s usually kept,” Quill said as he stood up from where he’d moved to examine the floor. “Elsie was right.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to leave now,” Ivy said, starting for the stairs. “I’ve had about all that I can endure of surprises for one night.”

  Wordlessly, Quill and Maitland followed.

  * * *

  Quill’s mood on the drive back to Beauchamp House was much darker than it had been on the journey out.

  The fact that Serena had separated him and Ivy into separate carriages did nothing to improve things either. Though they’d not told her about what had happened with Cassandra, the fact that both he and Ivy, and later Maitland, had disappeared from the drawing room for an extended period of time had alerted her to the fact that something was amiss, and she’d hurried Ivy into the first carriage with the Hastings sisters, leaving Quill to ride back with Lady Daphne and Maitland, who flirted shamelessly all the way.

  By the time the carriage stopped in the drive of Beauchamp House, Quill was ready to throttle anyone who so much as breathed in his direction. And his humor was not improved when he stalked into the entrance hall to find Serena waiting for him, her mouth a line of impatience.

  “I would like to speak to you, please,” she said without preamble as he brushed past her toward the stairs.

  “In the morning,” he said in a tone that brooked no objection. “I need to speak to Ivy.”

  Now that they were back on home territory, he didn’t care who heard him.

  “She’s gone up to bed with a headache, Quill,” Serena said hurrying after him. “I think you’d better get some rest too. You’ve got a long journey ahead of you tomorrow.”

  “Where are you going, my lord?” asked Daphne as she and Maitland followed behind them at a slower pace. “I don’t suppose you’d wish to bring a few things back from London for me if that’s your destination. I left some very important books, and I’d like to—”

  Quill heard Maitland’s low voice telling her to hush and was grateful for that at least.

  When they reached the landing at the third floor, he turned to Serena and took her by the shoulders. “I know my duty. I will do it. But I beg you will leave us alone for now.”

  He saw a flicker of understanding in Serena’s eyes as she took his meanin
g. And though she squared her jaw, she gave him a reluctant nod.

  Not caring if Maitland or Daphne saw his intention, he strode down the hall and without knocking opened the door to Ivy’s bedchamber and walked in.

  To find it empty.

  A frisson of panic ran through him before he realized Ivy and her maid were likely in the dressing room.

  In for a penny, in for a pound.

  When he opened the door to the dressing room he found Ivy being unbuttoned from her gown by her maid.

  “Get out,” he said to the wide-eyed girl. Bobbing a curtsy, she was gone before Ivy could even turn to give him the full force of her scowl.

  “You have no right to come into my dressing room and order my maid about,” she said with a huff of anger. “You get out.”

  “Not until we’ve had a conversation,” he said curtly.

  When he didn’t begin at once, she raised her brows in exaggerated annoyance. “Well? You’re so keen to talk to me. Then talk.”

  He noted the shadows beneath her eyes and the traces of dried tears, and cursed himself for being a scoundrel.

  In a gentler voice he said, “Come, let’s go into the other room where you can be comfortable.”

  “I would have been a great deal more comfortable if you’d let Polly finish getting me out of this corset,” she said in a harassed tone.

  Wordlessly he moved behind her and began undoing the buttons that ran down her back. The action so reminiscent of their afternoon in the little cottage that he found himself swallowing back a groan of desire.

  But that was what had got them in this mess in the first place. So he steeled himself against the sight of the vulnerable skin of her back and let her step out of the gown before going to work on the lacing of her corset.

  With a modesty that was somewhat amusing given what they’d been to each other, she refused to turn around when the corset was unfastened and said in a cool voice, “Please hand me the robe on the hook there.”

  He glanced around and saw the one she meant and held it as she slipped first one, then the other arm through the sleeves and allowed the stays to drop to the floor before cinching the belt of the cotton wrap. Turning to him with a glower, she turned with hauteur and stalked out of the tiny dressing room into the bedchamber beyond.