“Please,” she whispered. “Let me go.”
She meant it literally as well as figuratively. This madness could never be repeated. She would not be his mistress, and she needed to find evidence of his guilt. The two were insurmountable obstacles.
“Do not be so stubborn,” he ordered without heat. “I am taking you to your chamber, and that is that.”
Indeed, unless she was mistaken, there was a note of something else underlying his tone. Something warm and affectionate. Something that spoke to her heart. Sent a molten trill straight through her.
She told herself it was because she wished to avoid detection that she remained silent as he carried her down the hall through the darkness. That it was why her arms linked around his neck, why she nestled her face into the heated skin of his chest. Here, he smelled like him, musk, and citrus and so very good, she could not help but to press her nose close and inhale.
The hitch in his breath told her he noticed her sudden interest. “You would be wise to cease, madam, if you do not wish me to take you back to my chamber and keep you there for the next sennight at least.”
Though he issued it as a warning, his voice was husky with sensual promise.
Her heart beat fast enough to rival the wings of a butterfly. She kept silent, resisting the urge to press her lips to him one last time. If her fingers toyed with the silky ends of his hair as he carried her, it could not be helped. How she wished they were different people, in a different place, a different time.
But they were as lost to each other as they had ever been.
He stopped, jostling her a bit as he opened a door, and crossed the threshold before closing the door quietly at his back. Slowly, he lowered her to the floor, his hands going to her waist to steady her when she wobbled.
“You must go at once,” she blurted, needing to somehow banish the unwanted emotions threatening to overwhelm her. Needing to banish him. His presence in her chamber so near to dawn would be fodder for belowstairs gossip, and she had no wish to make a pariah of herself or invite undue scrutiny. She still needed to find a way into the locked drawer of the desk in his study.
At the thought, hot shame swept over her. What had she done? She had granted the man she was betraying the greatest liberty of all. She had given him her body. He had kissed her, worked his knowing hands over her. He had used his mouth upon her. How would she look upon him by morning light, knowing she had lain with him?
“I will go,” he said softly, his voice a delicious rumble that did not fail to produce a frisson of something wicked down her spine. “But this is not done between us, Jacinda.”
“It is,” she insisted. For it was. It had to be. Indeed, it had never begun, for she was deceiving him. Plotting against him even as he touched her with such tenderness that she longed to cry.
“Nay.” He caressed her waist, keeping her anchored to him, and yet not attempting further seduction. “It is not. You came to me tonight.”
She swallowed. Yes, she had, for her weakness for him knew no bounds. Even now, her heart gave a pang at what could never be. But she could not forget that even without the shadow of Kilross dogging her, she was naught but a need to be assuaged for Whitley. He would grow weary of her. She was merely a woman he would bed, not wed.
“I should never have done so,” she forced herself to say, for it was the truth, stark and bitter, torn from her.
“I am glad you did.” His hands slid up her back, warming her through the layers of her nightrail and dressing gown.
Her cheeks heated at the realization he must have dressed her. When she had fallen asleep in the warm, soft cocoon of his bed, she had been naked, sated, and tired. He had held her to him, his heart thumping with steady reassurance beneath her ear, and she had been too sated and content to move.
How could she have so thoroughly lost sight of what she must do? How had she allowed herself to become so vulnerable to him? Her hands stole to his shoulders, but instead of pushing him away as she knew she must, she remained as she was, absorbing his quiet strength. He had donned a robe for their journey down the hall, and she missed his skin.
She trod on most dangerous ground, just one more kiss from ruin. “I do not regret coming to you, but we cannot engage in such folly again.”
He shocked her then by drawing her to him in a tight embrace and burying his face in her hair. “The only folly would be in never holding you in my arms again. I need you, Jacinda.”
With the faint light of dawn stirring beyond the window dressings and the jingling of tack, a sign of London coming to life on the street below, reality intruded. His gentleness disarmed her. How she wished for his bite rather than his purr.
But she could not forget that at any moment, the servants would stir. “The domestics will soon be about. Please, I beg of you, leave me.”
He kissed her crown before releasing her. “I will do as you wish, but do not think I will concede defeat so easily. We have only just begun.”
With that promise, he left her standing alone, mourning the loss of his comforting presence and touch. The realization of what she must do next left her colder than she had ever been.
*
The morning had dawned grim and gray and raining, forcing Crispin to take his curricle to The Duke’s Bastard. Foul weather never failed to make the wound in his thigh ache and his disposition to turn sour.
But the drizzle and the chill were not the sole reason for Crispin’s sullen mood as he stalked into Duncan’s office unannounced, slamming the door at his back. He had finally had Jacinda Turnbow where he wanted her most—on her back in his bed—and yet by the light of day, it was as if she’d never been there.
He had nothing but the lingering scent of jasmine on his pillow and one long, unruly strand of sunset hair in his sheets as proof that making love to her had not been a strange fabrication of his war-maddened mind.
Duncan looked up from the ledgers he’d been reviewing at his desk, raising a golden brow. “Whitley, you look as if you have just attended your own funeral.”
Crispin threw himself into an overstuffed chair opposite Duncan’s desk, sighing. “Do I resemble a corpse to you, Duncan?” he asked irritably.
His friend studied him silently for a beat. “Whisky, Cris?”
“In the morning?” he returned, continuing their little game as if he hadn’t given many a bottle the black eye before midday with nary a speck of guilt.
Duncan sat back in his elaborately carved seat. Hades rose in stark relief from the polished walnut at his right shoulder and Persephone at his left. The dichotomy seemed appropriate. Hades certainly represented Duncan, though his Persephone had yet to be discovered. “You have yet to tup the governess, then?”
Crispin’s ears went hot. “You have tongue enough for two sets of teeth, Duncan.”
“Astounding.” His friend grinned. “I never thought I would see the day you would wear your heart on your sleeve for a prim and proper governess.”
“I do not have a heart,” he growled, “and if I did, I most assuredly would not wear it upon my sleeve for Miss Turnbow or anyone else. I would toss the worthless thing into the fire grate and see it turned to ash.”
Duncan’s levity only deepened. “You look well aside from your formidable frown, Cris. I am happy to see it. And I daresay you smell a great deal better now than you did on the last occasion upon which we crossed paths. Perhaps your little governess is good for you.”
“She is not mine,” he gritted, forcing his mind to his reason for coming to The Duke’s Bastard, which was certainly not to be hounded by Duncan about Miss Turnbow. His inner irritation on that score alone was enough to make him itch. “Did you receive the packet of letters I had my man deliver here last night?”
“I did.” Duncan’s countenance sobered at once. “You mentioned only having uncovered them in your household. Where the devil did you find them?”
“In my study, inside the locked drawer of my desk.” His fingers tightened on the arms of his c
hair, his knuckles going white beneath the strain. “Tucked betwixt the pages of my journals.”
Duncan’s jaw hardened. “Bloody hell, that is deuced odd.”
The misgiving he had felt upon the odd discovery the day before returned tenfold. “My thought precisely.”
“Clearly, they are ciphers,” Duncan said, depositing his quill in its inkwell, his dark gaze sharpening. “What secrets they contain is anyone’s guess. I have already put out inquiries into the matter. One of my gentlemen is familiar with deciphering. If there are answers to be had, I will obtain them for you. Have you any inkling as to who might have done such a thing or why?”
He shook his head, still as perplexed all these hours later as he had been last night upon his initial discovery. What purpose could enciphered missives hidden in his desk possibly serve? Who would have hidden them there? The only enemies he had ever possessed were the French soldiers he had faced in battle.
Along with one soulless Spaniard. The guerillero’s face rose in his mind, for he had committed it to memory. If he ever saw El Corazón Oscuro again, he would gladly make that bastard pay for what he had done to Morgan. Crispin would begin by severing his hand. And after that…
With a shudder, he forced himself to return to the present. He was no longer at war, and there was no means by which he would ever again see the Spanish cutthroat who had earned his reputation in spilled blood.
“I haven’t an inkling who might be behind this,” he admitted to Duncan. “As for motive, I cannot speak to it without knowing what the cursed things say.”
Duncan inclined his head. “I will have answers for you, Cris. Fear not on that account. Whoever he is, we will run the bastard to ground.”
Humility was a new sensation for Crispin in the life he had cultivated since his return from war. He felt it now, a sharp twinge in his chest. An ache in his gut. Duncan was a loyal and trusted friend, and he knew better than anyone money could not buy such a privilege. “Thank you, Duncan. Have you any cutthroats you can spare? I dislike the notion of some scoundrel slipping into my home and acquainting himself with my personal effects.”
“Here now, Cris.” Duncan made a flourishing gesture with his hands. “My men are not cutthroats. They are gentlemen of the first stare.”
“Just as your lightskirts are ladies,” he grumbled, wondering anew why his friend quibbled over such trivialities. The entire staff of The Duke’s Bastard wore livery. But then, Crispin could not deny the genius of the club that Duncan had built, located on St. James and appealing to all the vices of the ton’s supposed gentlemen, from gaming to quim. It had certainly made him a hideously wealthy man, far greater in riches than the man who had sired and denied him. “Does referring to a criminal as a gentleman render him any less a criminal or any more a gentleman?”
“If he believes it himself, then it does, and that is all I require.” His irascible friend grinned again. “I shall gladly provide you with some of my gentlemen, however. Whisky now? Or will you be returning home to Miss Turnbow’s—”
“Damn you,” he interrupted Duncan’s lewd bent of thought. “Do not say another word about her.”
Duncan blinked, an expression of feigned innocence pinned to his face, the blighter. “Dear me. I was about to say ‘careful tutelage of your sisters’ but if you had something else in mind, you randy devil…”
Gritting his teeth, Crispin rose from the chair. “If only everyone else thought you as droll as you find yourself, friend.”
“I have it on good authority that most do.” Duncan winked as he stood as well. “Particularly those of the female persuasion. It would seem, at any rate, that they find me far more entertaining than they find you these days.”
He scowled. “If you refer to your ladies of dubious morals…”
“I refer to your governess,” his friend interrupted smoothly.
The man was like a dog with a bloody bone. “Curse it, Duncan, I already told you that she is not mine.”
Duncan stalked to the sideboard and poured a finger of whisky into a glass. “Are you sure I cannot tempt you?”
Crispin shook his head, for he needed his mind sharp and unclouded. “My mind is enough of a cesspool today without the devil’s brew.”
His friend shot him a glance, his brow raised. “Turning down whisky and mooning about like a lovesick lad? What will happen next?”
He scowled. “I do not moon.”
Duncan cupped a hand to his ear in a theatrical gesture. “Did you hear that sound? I do believe it was the parson’s mousetrap.”
“I am not wedding the governess,” he snapped with more force than necessary. Unbidden, the foolish bent of his thoughts whilst he had been deep inside her sweet cunny returned to him. His cheeks heated.
Duncan tossed back the content of his glass and let out a slow exhale, observing him all the while in that uncanny way of his. “God’s blood, I never thought I would see the day the Duke of Depravity was brought low by any woman, let alone a spinster governess.”
He winced at the reminder of the mocking title he had been christened with in the scandal sheets. “I am not depraved, and neither is Miss Turnbow a spinster. She is lovely, with fiery-red hair and warm sherry eyes that crinkle in the corners when she is amused. Her nose has the most distracting smattering of freckles, and her mouth is made for…” Suddenly aware of his friend’s grimly amused countenance, he stopped himself from further waxing poetic about Miss Turnbow’s endless attributes and cleared his throat. “That is to say, I am sure she could have her choice of any gentleman.”
Not for the first time, it occurred to him that she had likely been forced to become a governess because she’d been ruined by some cad who had taken her maidenhead and then run off to war only to get himself killed. The notion of some young buck so misusing her did not sit well with him. She had been reduced to a life of purgatorial servitude, left to be preyed upon by unscrupulous masters who…
Damnation, left to be preyed upon by him.
It was a sobering realization. Devil take it, how was he any better than the bastard who had bedded her and left her? He, too, had taken what he wanted without offering her anything of substance in return, for the lady had made it abundantly clear she would not be his mistress.
Duncan had poured himself another drink while Crispin prattled on. He took a sip, pinning Crispin with a considering stare. “I do believe you have fallen in love with the lady.”
His friend’s quiet pronouncement rocked him even more than his inner musings had. “Do not be daft.”
For how could he be in love with anyone when he did not believe in such rot? Never mind he had only known her for a short span of time. Never mind she did not share the same station as he. That she had refused him at every opportunity.
But she had also come to him when he had been in the throes of one of his violent nightmares. She had touched him with a tenderness that undid him even now as he stood in The Duke’s Bastard with Duncan looking on, a witness to his inner chaos. He could still hear her sweet voice, the utter conviction underlying her words.
If I could take on the pain for you, I would.
And she had not left him. She had given him one night.
He wanted all her nights.
Every single damned one.
“I do not think I am daft, Cris.” Duncan’s contemplative voice plucked him once more from the thoughts that threatened to drown him. “You care about this woman.”
“Yes,” he rasped, the admission torn from him but nonetheless true. “Bloody, sodding hell. Much good it does me.”
“Woo her,” his friend suggested, shocking him, for it was the least likely sentence to emerge from the mouth of Duncan Kirkwood, devil-may-care, black-hearted gaming hell owner.
“How?” he asked before he could stay his wayward tongue. “One does not escort a governess to a ball or take her for a drive. Good God, I am not the sort of man who can stomach such nonsense even if I wished it.”
“I am hosting a
masque here tomorrow,” his friend pointed out.
“A Cyprian ball,” he argued. “I can hardly escort her to such an event, and even if I could, Miss Turnbow would never agree to such a thing. Propriety is the woman’s middle name.” Except for when she was in his arms. The unwanted thought made heat flare inside him.
“Tsk, Cris. It is a masquerade ball.”
Bloody Duncan and his love of wordplay.
Crispin could not suppress his wicked grin. “No doubt attended by ladies and gentlemen.”
“You are learning, Duke,” Duncan mocked. “Slowly but surely. You need have no fear she will be seen. Guests are to remain discreetly masked at all times.”
He knew he ought to be appalled by his friend’s suggestion. There was no means by which he could persuade Jacinda to attend such an inappropriate gathering. But since it was a masque, no one would know her identity. And the thought of escorting her to one of Duncan’s wild balls gave him a flutter of pleasure. How he would love to see her cheeks flush. To watch her watch the other couples engaged in amorous play. To take her to a private room and strip her bare.
He swallowed. “Perhaps if I can convince her, it would suffice.”
Duncan raised his glass in mock salute. “You will think of a way. Of that, I have no doubt.”
Chapter Fourteen
Holding a bouquet of hothouse flowers in one hand, Jacinda rapped on the duke’s study door with the other. It had been twelve hours since she had last seen him. Since she had last touched him.
Twelve wretched hours.
But who was counting?
“Who is it?” he called from within his lair.
How odd it seemed to be separate from him now. To be the servant at his whim, standing on the other side of a portal that denied her entry without his explicit consent. Just that morning, he had held her in his arms, carrying her to her chamber as if she weighed no more than a babe. We have only just begun, he had promised her, only to disappear for the majority of the day.
She had been unable to sleep following his departure from her chamber, alternately horrified at her lapse in judgment and aching to repeat the mistake in equal measure. Instead, she had performed her own perfunctory ablutions with water gone cold the night before and dressed, pacing the floor and wondering how she would face him after going willingly to his bed.
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