Sapphires Are an Earl's Best Friend

by Shana Galen

  Devil take him if he was not completely besotted by that damned courtesan. And devil take him if he was going to stand idly by while his father defiled her. He started away. From far away, he heard Angelique calling after him. He gave her a distracted wave and headed for the stairs. Halfway to his father’s room he realized the ridiculousness of his actions. He would not stop his father from defiling her. Could a courtesan even be defiled? And she had gone willingly. If he interrupted, he’d only be an annoyance to both of them.

  He arrowed for his bedchamber instead. Once there, he dismissed his valet and loosened his cravat so it spilled down his white linen shirt. He still held the glass of brandy, and he replenished it and stared out his window, sipping it. He knew what the problem was. He’d become so focused on stopping this liaison between Lily and his father, he’d become obsessed with her. And she, being a courtesan, had exploited that weakness and bewitched him. What he needed was sleep. He would be able to look at everything with new eyes in the morning. Without bothering to undress, he flopped on his bed and threw his hand over his eyes. He fluffed his pillows then turned on his side. He turned on the other side and covered his face with a pillow. He tried lying on his stomach. Nothing worked. He was not going to be able to rest. Not until he stopped whatever was happening in his father’s bedchambers.

  He was a fool. He knew it. He knew he should leave well enough alone, but that didn’t stop him from finding himself in the corridor outside the duke’s bedchamber. A servant passed, and Andrew tried to look overly interested in one of the paintings on the wall. When the man was gone, he spun to stare at his father’s closed door. He didn’t hear any sounds. Were they sleeping? Was he too late?

  Andrew approached the door, lifted his hand, then lowered it again. What was he doing? This was madness. He should…

  Suddenly the door opened. Lily jumped and covered her mouth to stifle a small squeak. “Darlington,” she breathed. “What are you doing here?”

  It was the question he’d been asking himself for the past quarter hour. But instead of answering, he devoured her with his eyes. She was still dressed in the gown she’d been wearing earlier—a sober black gown that did not quite fit with her role here. It glittered with silver, making her porcelain skin look almost ethereal in the dim light. Her hair was a bit mussed, one long curl falling over the creamy flesh of her partly exposed shoulder. She did not look like a woman just emerging from a bed of sin.

  And then he heard it—a loud snore. He pushed past her and peered into the room. His father was sprawled, fully dressed, on the bed. He lay face down, his enormous buttocks like a small hill on the large tester bed.

  Andrew looked at Lily, and she looked back, her brows raised. “Not quite the scene you expected, is it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Why should you be any different?”

  He frowned at her.

  “Is there something you need, Darlington?” she whispered.

  “I’ll walk you back to your room.”

  She shook her head. “I do not need an escort.” She pushed him out the door. “Good night.”

  Andrew watched the door close. She was staying? For what purpose? He stuck a foot in the doorway, holding it open. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not ready to leave yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Go back to your room or to whatever you were doing, and leave me in peace.”

  She shoved him out the door and closed it in his face.

  ***

  Lily leaned back against the door, praying her conversation with Darlington hadn’t disturbed the duke. She’d had to duck and twist and scamper to avoid the duke’s nimble fingers. And when she’d finally persuaded him to lie down, she’d had to promise him all manner of wickedness before he finally fell into a drunken slumber. She’d barely begun to search the room when she’d heard footsteps outside and feared the valet was coming to attend to his master.

  Instead, she found Darlington. Would the man not leave her alone? He was the most determined person she had ever met—and the most interfering. She needed twenty minutes to search the duke’s chambers. Twenty minutes. Leave it to Darlington to rob her of even that much.

  There was silence on the other side of the door, and she took a breath and scanned the room. She would begin with the desk. She could search the papers there quickly and then go through the drawers of his tall boy. She opened the first of the desk’s drawers and rifled through the contents, not caring if she spilled half of them on the floor. She could claim their passion had overcome them and resulted in the room’s disarray. Unfortunately, her quick perusal revealed nothing of rubies, nothing of Artemis, nothing…

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Lily jumped and spun to face the door. Now what? She glared at the door and willed Darlington to go away. She opened another drawer and spilled its contents on the floor, shuffling through papers, quills, and ink pots. She scanned the parchments, hoping to catch a reference to her fellow agents. Payments or promises of payments for services might also prove valuable. Did the man not keep a ledger?

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Lily stifled a scream of frustration.

  The duke snuffled and stirred. Lily held her breath until he settled again and his snoring resumed. She was going to kill Darlington. She’d never killed anyone before, never wanted to. She had a very even temper. But Darlington was testing the limits of her patience as no one ever had.

  The ledger was probably in the duke’s library. That would be the next place she searched, as soon as she could access it. In the meantime, there was still—THUMP!

  Lily jumped up, lifted her skirts, and raced to the door, pulling it open before Darlington’s hand could come down again. “What are you doing?” she hissed. “Go away!”

  “What are you doing?” He glanced past her, and though she tried to block his view by shifting her body, she knew he saw the mess she had made. “Are you trying to rob my father?”

  Lily rolled her eyes. “Go away,” she whispered. “You are not wanted here.”

  “Perhaps I should call for a magistrate. Then we’ll see who is not wanted.” He meant it, too. Lily could see in Darlington’s eyes that he was eager to accuse her of something. It would be just her luck if he did call the magistrate and she was thrown out before she could complete the mission. None of the men working for the Foreign Office were in a position to come close to the duke or see the inner workings of his household. The Foreign Office was counting on her to find the traitor.

  It was better to retreat tonight than to risk the entire operation.

  “Very well,” Lily said with a sigh. “I’ll return to my room. I need to fetch my wrap.” She closed the door again, gave the papers on the floor a last look, found her wrap, and opened the door.

  Darlington was waiting for her. Why should she be surprised? The man was tenacious. She had to give him that much credit.

  “I’ll escort you to your room.” He indicated she should precede him.

  “That’s not necessary.” She stuck her nose in the air and walked away from him, but it was not long before he was beside her.

  “You’re up to something.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, not looking at him.

  “Did you drug my father?” When she didn’t respond, he grabbed her elbow and pulled her back. “Is that why he was unconscious?”

  He was staring down at her and had her flattened against the wall, the edge of a portrait frame digging into her shoulder. “Did you happen to smell your father? He reeked of spirits. My guess is that he has been drinking since noon or thereabouts. He fell asleep without any aid from me. Even my charms failed to keep him awake.”

  A look of disgust covered the earl’s face. “I suppose you become used to it after a while, sleeping with old men and lechers, allowing them to pa
w you, slobber over you.”

  Lily felt the heat rise in her cheeks, and she had to clench her hands into fists to keep from slapping him. She didn’t know why his comments should anger her so. She’d heard them time and again, but she had always imagined Darlington was different. She had put him on a pedestal; she saw that now. He was just like everyone else—he saw only what he wanted to see.

  She began to issue a scathing retort, and then changed her mind. “Don’t forget that your love, Juliette, was quite recently a courtesan as well.”

  Darlington’s eyebrows came together, and his face went dark. She would never understand why he was so loyal to Juliette. What did he see in her that made it so easy to look past her station as a courtesan, when he could not look past it in Lily’s case? But Juliette could do no wrong. His unswerving affection made Lily suddenly angry. “She was pawed and slobbered on as much as any of us,” Lily went on, though she noted the dangerous look on Darlington’s face. “And don’t forget that she chose all of those other men over you. Again and again and again.”

  His fist hit the wall beside her head, and Lily had to contain a jump. She had thought he would hit her. He’d had that look in his eyes, and she’d seen his fist coming. She turned to look at his hand now. It was close, quite close. He pulled it away, and she saw the blood on his knuckles. “I don’t want to talk about Juliette.”

  “I do. You know we were both under the protection of the Earl of Sinclair. He liked us to join him in bed together.”

  “Stop.” His voice was low and murderous, but Lily could not stop herself. He’d had her kidnapped, insulted her at every turn, and now interrupted her vital work. She wanted him to be angry. She wanted him to be as annoyed and frustrated and furious as she was.

  “You should have seen Juliette pleasure the Earl of Sin. He liked it when she would—” Lily saw his hand go up, and she flinched, but it was his mouth that came down hard on hers, silencing her. This time she was ready for it. This time she met him on the battlefield. She kissed him back, bruising his lips, tearing at his hair with her hands. He made an incredulous sound, and then his arms were around her. But she wouldn’t be contained. She shoved him back, continuing her assault until it was he who was pinned to the wall and not her.

  “How do you like it?” she asked, breaking the kiss. “How do you like being the one taken?”

  He glared at her. She could see he hated her—no, he hated his desire for her. He wanted her, and he hated himself for that. Lily’s heart swelled in her chest. Darlington wanted her. She shouldn’t care. She should hate him, but she had wanted him for so long that to see the desire in his eyes, to feel his arousal pressed hard against her belly, was the ultimate fulfillment. He might love Juliette—or think he loved the idea of her—but he wanted her—Lily. And, judging from the lengths he’d gone to in order to evict her from his father’s bedchamber—he wanted her badly.

  She had the sudden realization she could take him to bed. She could take his hand and lead him to her room. He would go with her. He was barely fighting his need for her now. It might take a bit of coaxing, more kissing, but she could have him. She had loved him for so long…

  And if she bedded him, then what? Then his desire for her would be slaked, and he would go back to pining for Juliette and attempting to thwart her mission here. She would feel worse than she did right now. And she would be a prostitute in truth, because he would only be using her. Lily stepped back, letting her hands drop from Darlington’s neck. This was not what she wanted. Not like this. She wanted him to care for her. She wanted him to pine for her, as he pined for Juliette.

  That, she knew, would never happen, but she did not have to accept what he was offering now—a frantic coupling in the dark followed by his scorn in the morning.

  She’d already taken that road. She’d been young, only sixteen, but she had learned from her mistake. She would not make it again.

  “I’m returning to my room,” she said. “Alone.”

  He stared at her, his eyes dark with longing that made her belly flutter and her legs weak. “Do not follow me.” She forced her legs backward, forced herself to retreat, to leave him, though he was staring at her with undisguised need. She could almost feel his desire for her, and as soon as she was out of his sight, she began to run. Her slippers shushed loudly on the rug until she was certain he did not follow. Then she pressed herself against the wall, put a hand to her heart, and tried to catch her breath.

  She was lost now. She had no idea if this was the way to her room, but she would worry about that in a moment. Running away from Darlington had been harder than she could have anticipated. She felt an ache now that she was away from him. She wanted him so badly, and yet she hated him as much as he hated her. She didn’t understand it. She didn’t want to. She had a mission to complete. Men’s lives were at stake. She could not let them down. Something had to be done about Darlington’s interference.

  Perhaps if she found a way to keep him busy. The duke certainly had outings and entertainments planned. Perhaps she could make certain Darlington was involved in those. But even as she thought it, she shook her head. Darlington would never be occupied for long with picnics and archery. He had grown up on those pursuits. They would not keep his attention when he was so intent on keeping her away from his father.

  A woman, then. That was the only way. Perhaps she could interest him in the opera singer. Everyone knew that, aside from Juliette, opera singers were his weakness. Lily did not relish seeing him with another woman, but she needed him out of the way. And she needed him out of the way immediately. With a sigh, she started back for the drawing room. It was early, and she had no doubt Ravenscroft’s guests were still drinking and debauching.

  When she reached the drawing room, it was unusually quiet. Perhaps she had misjudged the time. Could everyone already be abed? She knew country hours were earlier than those she kept in Town. Cautiously, Lily reached for the door’s handle and pushed it open. Lord Kwirley sat in a chair by the fire, sipping what looked like port. He glanced up at her and raised a brow. “Back so soon?” he said with a sneer. “Did you find so little to entertain you?” He placed his thumb and forefinger close together. “So very little?”

  “Where are the others, Lord Kwirley?” Lily asked. Why did he have to be the one left behind? Her luck of late was atrocious. Fallon had once warned her to stay out of Kwirley’s path, and a warning like that from Fallon was not to be taken lightly.

  He rose. “Outside.” He walked to the serving tray, lifted a clean glass, and filled it with sherry. “Here you are.”

  “No, thank you. Why have they gone outside?”

  “Not even thirsty after your exertions?” Kwirley shook his head. “You are wasted on a buffoon like Ravenscroft.”

  Lily frowned and peered over her shoulder. She did not want to go outside and look for the others, but it appeared she had little other choice. Obviously Kwirley was not going to help her by offering information. She’d have to see for herself.

  “You are the determined one, aren’t you?” He’d sidled closer while she’d been looking away. “They’ve gone swimming.”

  Lily blinked as much from surprise as the sharp scent of alcohol on Kwirley’s breath. “Swimming?”

  “Yes.” He offered her the sherry again, and this time she took it. “The duke mentioned a pond at dinner, and they all seemed keen to try it out. Sans clothing, of course.” He leaned close, so close she could see the stubble on his cheeks. He was a handsome man. He knew it, too, and thought his appearance gave him leave to act the perfect scoundrel. She was not impressed. “Will you join them?” he asked.

  Lily wanted to curse. Even if she found the opera singer—what was her name?—she would undoubtedly be involved in some sort of groping and rolling about. This was hardly the time to persuade the singer to seduce Darlington. Lily’s errand would have to wait until breakfast. “I do not think so,” she
told Kwirley.

  “Too bad.” He lifted a finger and stroked her cheek. “For you, I would have ventured out myself.”

  “Good night, my lord.”

  He grabbed her arm before she could take the first step. “Why in such a hurry? Is the duke awaiting your return?”

  “Yes.” She looked down at his hand. “Release me.”

  “What a little liar,” Kwirley said, pulling her closer. “I am certain the duke is snoring loudly enough to wake the dead by now. That means you and I have plenty of time to become better acquainted.”

  “I do not wish to become better acquainted, my lord. I wish to retire.” She pulled her arm, but he didn’t release it. Instead, he set his empty glass on a table and took her by both arms.

  “What did that little harlot tell you? That little bitch!” He shook Lily, causing her to spill the sherry over her gown and onto the rug.

  “Stop!” she said out of annoyance.

  He shook her again, and she dropped the glass. It made a muted thud on the carpet. “Tell me what she said.”

  “Fallon told me to stay out of your path.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes. Now unhand me before I scream and wake the house.” She was not afraid, but she would have rather ended this expediently and quietly. The other methods she could employ would only anger Kwirley, and she did not need an enemy in the house.

  “You didn’t heed her advice very well, did you?” he said, rubbing his hands up and down her arms. “You are most definitely in my path, sweet Lily. What shall I do with you?” He walked his fingers over her shoulder and up to her chin, tapping her lips.

  “My lord, do not make me scream.”

  “You won’t scream,” he said, caressing her exposed neck. “You do not want the whole staff alerted to your activities. They might tell your lover.”