by Kate Moore
His face remained hard and closed. He had withdrawn into himself to some memory or association. From their first night together, Lady Ravenhurst had been a figure in the background of every scene, and Emily was no nearer to understanding what the lady meant to Lynley than she had been that first evening.
Emily thought of all she’d seen and heard. Most likely Archer’s wager had been about Lady Ravenhurst and Walhouse, but perhaps he had got it wrong. The wager had been that an unhappy wife would take a lover. It was the way of the fashionable world. A woman constrained to marry a man of her family’s choosing could take a lover once she had produced the required heir. Lady Ravenhurst might be pleasing herself through an affair with Clive Walhouse, or she might be caught up in something not of her choosing.
The wind had become brisk and cold. Clouds of tarnished silver piled up above them, darkening the day. The mud had hardly dried on Emily’s skirts. She would ask her maid to brush them later, though she was not sure the gown could be saved. But it was a gown after all, not a marriage. “In any case, Lady Ravenhurst’s unhappiness, her gaming debts, those are not our concern. We’re after missing government papers.” As she said it, she looked up and met his gaze.
“Willing to risk a soaking?” he asked.
She glanced at the heavy sky. They weren’t going far, just beyond the Marylebone Road. Her bonnet and cloak had no great pretensions to fashion. She nodded. “Is your groom willing?”
Lynley looked back at the young man.
“Then we investigate the house,” he said. His grin returned, and she felt once more that she understood him. There was a risk to be taken, and he was happy to take it. She looked down again at her ruined skirts, to hide how pleased she felt at that we.
* * * *
The sky, which had been so bright and sunny at one, was nearly black when they reached the quiet, out-of-the-way street named in the lease. The buildings were new, part of the grand architectural schemes of the king when he had been regent. The park named in his honor was supposed to open to the public one day. The crescent where Clive Walhouse had rented a place was three stories of white stone. Each small but elegant apartment had a tall, narrow entry that jutted out from the building, iron railings around the ground floor and a balcony off the first-story window.
“How are we to get in?” she asked Lynley as they approached.
He glanced up and down the street. A few pedestrians hurried past as the sky blackened and the wind shook the trees. He escorted her to the little covered entry and told her to wait while he found a way in through the back. She stood under the roof, out of sight as he drove off.
Between the heavy dark clouds and the ground, the sky took on a violet hue. The air waited, charged and squeezed between cloud and earth. A closed carriage passed slowly down the street, the driver on the box turning to stare at the house, and Emily shrank further into the shadow of the little roof.
Finding missing papers was the sort of game she and Frederick and Roz had often devised for a summer’s afternoon at Candover. Mother would take some treasure from the attics to hide in a hollow tree trunk or a crumbling stone wall, and they would follow the clues she set until darkness or rain sent them back inside for cakes and lemonade. But the papers for which she and Lynley searched mattered to some clever, ruthless enemy who would kill to possess them.
Abruptly, lightning flashed and vanished. The street disappeared in blackness. Emily held her breath. The world returned, thunder boomed, and rain fell in a straight gush.
Behind Emily the door opened. Relieved, she turned and started forward, recoiling as she met not Lynley, but a stranger in a rough coat with a round-crowned felt hat pulled low over his bearded face.
“Hah,” he said, grinning at her. “I know you.”
Emily shook her head. “You most certainly do not.” She backed out of the little porch. The rain hit her, and plastered her bonnet and cloak to her person. She whirled and dashed for the street, but the closed carriage she’d seen earlier pulled up at the end of the walkway, trapping her between the iron railings and the stranger. He grabbed her cloak and yanked hard. She staggered and reached for the iron railing. Her captor put his arms around her waist, trying to shake her loose. Her bonnet fell forward, obscuring her vision. Rain pelted her, soaking her gloves and sending cold trickles down her nape. Her captor smelled rank and sour. He heaved her up off her feet, and she lost her hold on the slick iron.
“Look what I found, Dicky,” he called to the carriage driver. “Wager we’ll be well paid to give ʼer back to ʼer husband,” he said, wrestling her toward the carriage.
Emily clawed at the arms around her waist and tried to plant her feet. “Let me go.” Her skirts clung to her legs.
“Ye need to learn not to run off...” The words ended in a high-pitched yelp. Emily was free, and the man was down on his side on the flagstones, curled in a ball, Lynley standing over him.
The driver of the carriage shouted something that was lost in another crash of thunder.
Lynley grabbed her hand and hauled her after him down the walk and into the house. He shut and bolted the door and pulled her into his arms.
“I’m so-so-so—” she started to protest, then the shivering took over. She thought she would come apart with the shaking, but Lynley held her. Their breath sounded ragged in her ears.
They stood dripping on the entry stones. Beyond them a narrow, carpeted hall extended through the gloom the length of the building. The flickering light of the storm entered from a stairwell at the midpoint of the hall. Thunder rumbled and crashed above them.
Lynley removed her bonnet and tossed it aside. He tucked her hands inside his coat against his ribs. She wanted to thank him, but could not keep her teeth from chattering.
“You know,” he said amiably, “we have to get you out of these ruined clothes.”
She had to agree. She was wearing a gown of ice.
“Wait here,” he said. “They won’t be back. They did what they came to do before we arrived. I must have scared that fellow your way.”
He pulled free, and she let him go. The cold in the house was deep. She supposed that no fire had been lit for weeks. She heard him moving in the next room. She needed to tell him the ruffian’s mistake about her identity.
He returned with a lit candle. “Upstairs,” he said. “Let’s get you warm.”
They climbed by the candle’s steady glow and the storm’s sudden flashes. At the top of the stairs a hall led to a bedroom at the rear of the house.
Lynley set the candle on a dressing table, revealing a scene of disarray. Someone had swept everything from the table to the floor, including a box of loose powder. A streak of it lay white on the blue carpet, giving off the powerful flowery scent of the papers Lynley had found in Clive Walhouse’s room. Dresser drawers had been emptied onto the floor, and the doors of a tall wardrobe hung open, with a lavender silk wrapper spilling out.
Lynley ignored the mess. Standing in front of her, he stripped off her sopping cloak. Then he took hold of her shoulders and turned her around to fumble with the tiny buttons at the back of her gown.
“I suppose these are the height of fashion,” he said. “A sensible woman would have buttons a man could see.”
Emily thought a sensible woman would not be mixed up with wardrobe-wrecking spies and ruffians.
With the same brisk efficiency with which he’d removed her cloak, he pushed the gown over her shoulders and down past her hips. He untied the tapes at her waist to let her petticoat fall around her ankles. She felt him hesitate, his hands still at her waist, then he began to undo the laces of her stays. Her corset dropped to the floor.
Taking her hand, he turned her toward him and helped her step out of the pile of wet garments. Then he stopped moving. In the gap between intention and action, he simply gazed at her.
The candle’s glow enclosed them in a cir
cle of wan golden light.
Her skin burned with the cold. Her hair dripped. Stinging rivulets of water trickled down her back and shoulders. Her ordinary, white lawn undergarments clung to her skin like sticking plasters.
A man of sense would see a melting figure of ice, like some frozen sculpture dissolving amid the fruits and desserts at the end of a grand party. Lynley stood transfixed. Emily had never seen the look on his face before.
She shivered, and he recovered and turned to the bed. He tore apart the coverings, pulling out a quilt and wrapping her in a cocoon of warmth. His hands moved over the quilt in a steady chafing motion. Emily let him warm her, keeping her jaw clamped shut, waiting for the violent chills to stop.
“That fellow must have searched the house,” he said. “I recognized him, one of Barksted’s hirelings.”
She wanted to tell him what the man had said, but she could not keep her teeth from chattering.
He kissed her mouth briefly, his lips warm and firm. “Tell me later,” he said. He pressed her head to his chest and kept up the chafing motion.
The storm drummed on the roof and water ran in sheets down the windows. The flicker of lightning and rumble of thunder moved north. When the chills subsided, she tried to speak again.
“Better?” he asked. She nodded against his chest. “Wait here. I’ll get a fire going.”
He stepped away, and Emily stared at the bed. The frame was heavy, dark wood. From the tall posts hung gorgeous blue and white bed curtains. Lynley’s attack on the covers revealed layers of sacking and straw stuffing piled under a mattress, pillows, and silken coverlet. It was a bed in which the princess would never feel the pea. When the bed curtains were pulled, the sleepers would be in a private world. It struck Emily that the house existed solely to hold this bed from which the rest of the world could be shut out. Outside, storms could rage. Inside it, the lovers would only be aware of each other.
Lynley returned with another candle, a bottle of wine, and two glasses. He lit the coals in the hearth and made them a nest of bedding and pillows on the floor. He settled Emily against the pillows, poured the wine, and stretched out beside her.
“Help is on the way,” he said.
“Help?” She managed to hold the glass he offered without spilling.
“I’ve sent for two reliable people. They’ll come with a closed carriage, and some things we need to get you safely home.”
She should be relieved, but she felt flat instead. She’d ended up soaked and useless. Their adventure would end before it began, without finding the spy. They had two mysteries to solve, and the questions remained unanswered. What trouble had Lady Ravenhurst gotten herself into and what had happened to her husband’s papers?
“This house is a lovers’ hideaway, isn’t it?” she asked Lynley. “What were Barksted’s men looking for, do you think?”
“Something to give Barksted a hold over Lady Ravenhurst. He knows she has a gaming habit, but apparently Walhouse held her IOUs, the ones we found.”
“Did Walhouse buy her then?” Emily shivered again, recalling Lady Ravenhurst’s bleak look of despair the night of her party.
Lynley nodded. “And Barksted wants to be the next man to have a hold over her, but his bully boys did us a favor with their search.”
“They did?”
He set his glass aside and withdrew a piece of paper from his coat pocket.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A letter,” he said. “A complaint from a neighbor of Clive Walhouse’s father in Kent.”
“That’s an odd thing to find here, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Very,” he said. “Read it.”
Emily, too, put down her glass, and leaned against him, their shoulders touching. The writer charged that Lord Strayde was negligent in his duty of appointing a new curate to the living in the neighborhood of Longfield. The people were suffering for lack of attentions of a clergyman, and he urged Lord Strayde to delay no longer, but to do his duty. The letter was recent.
She sat up. “It puts Walhouse here, doesn’t it? Immediately before his disappearance?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” she said. “You think he’s gone to this empty parsonage. It’s not too far from London, and it’s on the Dover road.”
“Stop,” he said, taking the letter from her hands and stuffing it back in his coat.
“Stop what?” she asked.
“Thinking, figuring things out.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, pushing her down into the pile of bedding and rolling to pin her there with his body. “It makes me want to do this.” He lay above her, propped on his elbows, looking down into her face. His hands touched her hair. His heavy-lidded gaze met hers, his dark eyes full of longing.
He was going to kiss her. It made no sense. One moment they were speaking of the mystery, and the next his body was pressed to hers.
She must look like a drowned cat fished from the river and wrapped in cotton batting. But in his eyes she saw herself, not as the spinster society mocked and her family despaired of, the spinster she protected from the world’s scorn with her important work. In his eyes she was another Emily, desirable, passionate, alive.
Her lips parted, thoughts of spies and papers fled, and her whole self stilled to receive that kiss.
And then it came. He leaned down. His imperfect mouth met hers, and heat shot through her, warming her everywhere at once. Emily arched up into his kiss, returning heat for heat. He smelled of rain-dampened wool and himself, a heady mixture of wood and spice and man that Emily would know anywhere.
She reached up, circling his back with her arms, containing him in the world of her arms, relishing the pressure of his chest against her breasts. He wore entirely too many clothes.
The kiss deepened, and she opened her mouth. His tongue met hers in a frankly carnal exchange, an invitation to throw off all restraint. A new and unexpected sensation spread through her limbs, burning away doubt and hesitation. With Lynley she realized, she could be freely and unabashedly herself, however flawed, muddied and disheveled, or obstinate and headstrong. She could even be that thing ladies were never permitted to be—clever. She kissed him back with open longing.
Through the layers of clothing and quilt he pressed urgently against her, as if his whole self strained to join her whole self. With one hand he tugged at the quilt, pulling it aside.
He lifted his face from hers and gazed down a little dazedly at her breasts.
“Now,” he said, his voice low and rough, “would be a good time to say no, if you wish it. There will be no gossip. Barksted’s men don’t know who you are.”
Cool air puckered the tips of her breasts. He had offered her a moment to regain control, as he had that day in the park when he’d seized Circe’s reins. Emily had only to pull the quilt around her. She knew the rules of her world, knew the limits of their partnership. She wore the heavy, lavish ring he’d bestowed on her, itself a sign that their betrothal was a show, an illusion, like a scene from the opera. But, whispered a voice she could not still, you want this.
“Yes,” she said.
A brief joy flashed in his dark eyes before his lids descended, his gaze fastened on her breasts. His left hand circled her right breast lightly through the thin lawn of her chemise. Then he lowered his mouth and took full possession, his teeth and lips drawing sensation from the taut nipple, sending pleasure streaking deep through her to gather and pool in the intimate place between her legs. She reached under his waistcoat and tugged at his shirttails, eager to put her hands to his flesh.
Her mind was empty of words. Sensation overwhelmed her.
Again he joined their mouths. He made a low noise in his throat, and his knee nudged her legs apart. She stilled, alert to the change, a lifetime’s habits of propriety in the sudden stiffness of her knees.
> Abruptly, she felt him pull back.
Chapter Nineteen
The husband hunter must not rely on the honor of a gentleman with whom she has formed the merest acquaintance at a ball or private party. She must assume that the better part of any gentleman’s character will remain unknown to her until revealed in a moment that requires integrity and courage.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Footsteps on the stairs and voices in the hall intruded. Lynley pushed himself off Emily and rolled away, springing up to stand at the mantel looking down into the fire. Emily had only a few seconds to pull herself upright and pull the quilt around her. A sharp rap sounded, and the bedroom door opened. Help had arrived.
A pair of young persons entered the room and greeted Lynley.
“Came as quick as we could, sir,” the young man said in a posh accent at odds with his appearance. He had extraordinary white teeth and ears that stuck out from an otherwise handsome young face. Next to him a girl of striking chestnut beauty bobbed a curtsy.
“Thanks, Wilde,” said Lynley. Lynley appeared his cool and distant self, while every part of Emily pulsed with heat. Her heartbeat galloped, sending her blood rushing through her veins. Lynley made the introductions and took the young man off with him to finish a search of the house.
Emily and the girl, Miranda, looked at each other.
“Now that they’ve gone, miss,” said Miranda, “let’s get you warm and dry. I’ve brought some things for you to wear.”
As good as her word, the girl laid the things she carried on the big bed. She helped Emily move near the fire, peeled away the quilt, and made quick work of helping Emily out of her still-damp undergarments. Emily found herself briefly naked, her breasts puckered, her flesh marked by lines where stays and ties had stiffened around her. Lynley’s scorching kisses had left no marks.
Miranda swiftly wrapped her in a towel, keeping up a bit of chatter about the storm. Then she helped Emily into dry pantaloons, shift, and corset, and a plain gown of pale green silk. She draped a cream wool shawl over Emily’s shoulders and led her to the dressing table bench.
