Regency Rogues Omnibus

by Shirl Anders

  But she believed him because too many circumstances surrounding him fit too well. She had seen him at her brother’s, and then again at the police, and he knew Yojo’s name without asking. Oh, she believed him. It was just that the details about The Order of the Satyr were so hard to believe, and she clung to that because it gave her hope. Clay could be all right. He might not be involved with this at all. No one had seen him or placed him in these circumstances.

  Nevertheless, Yojo might know, and she had to ask him as much as she dreaded it. She would have to ask him, as well as the things Brynmore needed to know. Kit was surprised at how she was able to remain composed on the outside, while she was a wreck on the inside. But she held to the pretense, acting as if she was ready and strong enough to tackle what needed to be done.

  “I’m in,” she said. “And I must go with you!”

  Brynmore did not look happy about it, but he nodded. It was one of those trustworthy male agreements. In the end he would do what he thought was best for her and claim, if he faltered on their agreement, that it was for her own safety and protection. Well, she would keep an eye on him. He would find it hard to detach himself from her.

  Then she blurted something strange, even to her, as she looked up at him. “I wonder what you look like without all that hair,” she muttered.

  She told herself that it had nothing to do with anything, and she had only said it to throw him off balance. But nothing in his body moved, his eyes, his lashes, his mouth . . . even his breathing it seemed, yet his presence intensified. So much so that she stepped back with the female inside her feeling checkmated. She’d never felt such a powerful amount of maleness in a man before, and she realized in that moment that Brynmore could affect her. Woman to man. Male to female. That surprising realization, more than the duty she felt to try to unravel real-life dangerous mysteries, sent her hurrying away from Brynmore, toward Yojo, to find out what she could.

  Yojo was difficult. However, having a fuller picture helped her to lead his babbling talk in a somewhat more informative direction. She got him to come out from under the bed. He sat on top of it, fidgeting, but still a bit calmer.

  “We want to be friends, Yojo, to help each other.”

  Yojo peered at her. “You would be my friend?”

  “Yes, of course,” she promised, sitting next to him.

  Kit noted that Brynmore stayed strategically across the room, trying, it seemed, for a more relaxed and nonthreatening pose for his large frame.

  “Yojo, does bad things,” Yojo muttered, looking down at his square hands. Then, he bounced them on top of his short legs. “But I helped, pretty Lady Joelle!” he added suddenly, with excitement rising in his voice, then falling away.

  “Yes, Brynmore, told me. She wants to thank you, I believe,” Kit tried.

  “I can see, Joelle?” Yojo exclaimed.

  “Yes, if you want to,” she said, patting his leg in an effort to hopefully keep him calmer. “But to do that we need your help. You need to tell us about Lord Incubus and Lord Hellion.”

  At just the mention of the names, Yojo squeaked, then he turned and scrambled under the pillows at the head of the bed. “Damn,” Kit muttered.

  Brynmore moved as though he would leave his station across the room, and she raised her hand stopping him. “Yojo, we know all about The Order of the Satyr. Joelle, told us everything, and we still want to be friends with you. We need your help. I need your help.”

  It was a coaxing affair, lasting over thirty minutes. Yojo would reveal some things, then become afraid again, and she would coax him anew. By the end, she had likely promised him the very moon, and she wondered at Yojo’s methods, because she felt bound to her assurances and promises.

  He told them in bits and pieces that he was very frightened because Hellion and Incubus had a very loud argument and falling out. Hellion was furious at Incubus because Incubus was going to leave Hellion and stop their partnership. There was more to the actual reasoning and how it happened, however Kit could only get that fact out of Yojo. The next informative jewel, she could see immediately excited Brynmore as it completely distressed Yojo, was that Incubus had left Yojo behind. But Yojo knew where he had gone ... St. Petersburg!

  Hellion, it seemed, wanted to kill Incubus. There was simply no leaving Hellion’s Order of the Satyr. It was stay, or try to leave and die. Yojo was terrified that Hellion wanted to kill him also, and he said over and over that he just followed his Master Incubus’s instructions. Kit could readily see why Yojo wanted to desperately cling to his, “new,” friends and to Joelle. It seemed his life was in danger. Yojo was becoming so agitated, she knew the end was coming to what she could reasonably gather from him for the evening.

  Nevertheless, she’d gotten Brynmore the essential parts that he needed, and now it was her turn. “Yojo, I think my brother, Clay knew Incubus. But now Clay is missing and I want you to think hard if you have ever seen him.”

  Brynmore started forward hearing Kit’s sudden turn of direction in her questioning. “Clay has golden eyes, Yojo, nearly like a lion’s eyes. He is as tall as, Brynmore, and...”

  “Golden eyes?” Brynmore uttered, at the same moment Yojo exclaimed.

  “Never see him! Yojo, never, never, never sees him!”

  Dread crawled up Brynmore’s spine. He knew immediately that Hellion would crave unusual golden eyes. He was thrice grateful that he’d left out Hellion’s human appendage altar from his explanation of events to Kit. Nevertheless, he could tell by the look on her lovely face that she saw Yojo’s reaction as clearly as he did to mean the opposite of what Yojo exclaimed. He had to divert her. There was no use speculating.

  When he reached the bed, he interrupted something Kit was about to say, and Yojo’s excessive noise, by speaking sharply. “Pack one bag, Miss Montoya. You, I, and, Yojo, we are all going to leave for England immediately. Then, I will go onto St. Petersburg.”

  Yojo fell silent, looking up at Brynmore, but Kit’s voice caught, seeming to change direction as she stood and grabbed his arm. “Tell me what happens to the missing men, Brynmore.” Her voice rose. “Tell me!”

  Brynmore wanted to grab her hand, and then pull her close to comfort her in her rising panic. Instead, he shrugged off her hand and he winced inwardly at the sharpness of his voice. “We have no time for this. If you are going to accompany me, I will give you ten minutes to dress and pack, because there is a ship set to leave at midnight and, Yojo, and I will be on it!”

  He moved away from Kit, lifting his hand toward Yojo’s shoulder, “Yojo, do you have things to pack. I’m taking you to see, Joelle.”

  Kit followed, grasping his shirt sleeve. “Tell me what happens to them!” she exclaimed. Then, she turned to Yojo who had trundled down off the bed. “Yojo, tell me what happens to them!”

  She went down on her knees before Yojo as Brynmore nudged Yojo toward the other bedroom. Only Yojo’s pitched voice could be heard clearly, and he shrieked, “Hellion God, sacrifices the worthy.”

  “Sacrifices as in kill?” Kit asked, exclaiming. The sound Yojo returned, as Brynmore coerced him away, while not saying, “yes,” was a clear affirmative.

  Then, an unexpected event happened to all of them, it seemed to Brynmore. The bedroom door came open with its solid surface slamming onto the wall. A tall slender man appeared and marched into the room along with the door leaping open. Brynmore turned with the intent to defend against an assailant, when he heard the thin man yelling.

  “What the hell are you doing here with my wife? Kit, is this what you do? Sneak away to fuck, this bear!”

  Kit gasped, then came to her feet, exclaiming. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick. How did you find me? What are you doing here?”

  Brynmore halted his attacking advance. Strangely, he felt as though he had been punched in the gut. Kit was married!

  “When a man’s wife, of infantile character, disappears on some addled-minded investigation, it is her husband’s only course, to save her from her own folly
! I’ve had to lower myself to bribe hotel managers to tell me the room of the short blond-haired American woman staying in this establishment!” Brynmore watched this, “Nick,” stop in front of Kit and glare down at her imperiously. “But I see I was only partially right, instead you are of cheap character and not involved with an insipid investigation, but engaged in fucking bears and midgets! My god, Kit, have you fallen completely into your idiocy?”

  Brynmore shoved Yojo into the side bedchamber, charging under his breath tersely. “Get your bags. Hurry!”

  “Nick, this is none of your business!”

  “It is all my business! Someone must school you from your defective ways!”

  Brynmore was stunned and livid at the same time. The man was an ass. However, what shocked him more was feisty Kit Montoya taking the ridicule from her donkey-assed husband. He could see she was aghast, but also shamed and somehow instantly downtrodden. It was a travesty, and he wanted to leap to her defense and show her bastard husband what a fine woman he was abusing with his demeaning words and attitudes.

  Brynmore knew he would forever regret not doing so. He tried, in his mind, to defend his next unconscionable actions by telling himself that the man was Kit’s husband and he had no right to interfere. However, that was a sham, because his real intent was to immediately use the situation to leave Kit behind, and he hoped, to get her out of The Orders mess and the resulting danger. Cold hearted, aye. He was a bastard, but he would damn well catch the killers in the end.

  Kit tried to tug her arm out of Nick’s grip, but Nick held her from following Brynmore and Yojo out of her hotel room.

  Brynmore’s last briskly spoken words still hung in her mind. “I will leave you to this mess. Fix your marriage and dinna follow us! I will find out what happened to your brother and send word.”

  Kit’s heart fell. How could she let Nick do this to her? How could she react just like he accused her of being and-and in front of Brynmore? Then with more force, and by catching Nick in a momentary lapse of his grip, she did manage to jerk her arm free. She turned angrily toward her traveling bags and she began packing them with jerky motions.

  “What are you doing? You are not following them or leaving here. I forbid it!” Nick said angrily.

  Kit snapped then. She could feel it like a whip cracking, and she did something she’d rarely done in her life, she yelled. “I am divorcing you, Nick Ralston! I have contacted a lawyer, and I never want to see you again!” She only regretted saying it too late, as angry tears threatened, she wondered why she cared if Brynmore Duneagan heard her say that or not. To try to regain her dignity was the answer that clamored within her mind.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Joelle attached the last veil to the scanty outfit she wore. The assemblage was nothing more than twenty sheer veils of varying colors draping her body from startling pinks, deep reds, to green, and even a gossamer black one. She was nude beneath and used light gold chain ropes with bangles attached, wrapped around and above her breasts with another one low around her hips to hang the veils on. It was a Gypsy dancer’s attire, a most seductive one, used specifically for a licentious belly rolling dance they did. A veil dance that she knew how to perform and intended to do for Saxon as an answer to some questions and adamant opinions he’d raised.

  “Opinions he has stuck to, damn, him!” Joelle muttered, biting one fingernail as she studied herself critically in the full length mirror. She was in her bedchamber at Gabriella and Drummond’s London mansion, which to her was part of the glaring problem. “I should be at Saxon’s home in London, not here!”

  However, Saxon had wanted it this way. Ever since Saxon had bought them passage to England, in separate cabins, she thought in exasperation, he’d made love to her only once on the ship. After their escape from The Order, that added up to only two times in all the weeks since. The minute Saxon’s boots had touched English soil, he’d undergone a change. Not that she knew him well enough to say that this Saxon was a change at all. It could be the real Saxon, for all she could say that she honestly knew. Being kidnapped and sexually abused by a cult did not necessarily allow one’s true bearing to show. The dangerous adventure, which she and Saxon had lived through, might not begin to portray Saxon’s everyday character.

  But she really did not believe that. She might have wondered, a little at first, after his change, however, Saxon had not left her completely clueless. He’d said on several occasions that she deserved better, not better than him, but just better treatment. Then, they’d also been extremely busy. Neither of them had any intentions of letting The Order of the Satyr continue blithely on its way. Destroying The Order was of the utmost importance to them, and the swiftness of events unfolding took a lot of their time, but it shouldn’t interfere with making love.

  “Regularly!” Joelle stated succinctly, undulating her hips once with a returning jingle of the bangles.

  Nevertheless, she’d finally discovered Saxon’s purpose concerning her, why he would kiss her with controlled passion, but then stop when it should naturally go further. Oh, she remembered his words exactly and while it was sweet and endearing, and even loving, it was totally ridiculous compared to the reality of their life and how they’d come together or intended to stay together.

  Saxon had said, when she’d confronted him in frustration last night, after he had stalled their building passion once again, “Joelle, I want to court you. I am courting you. Wooing you like the beautiful woman that you are.”

  “What rubbish,” Joelle muttered, with tears sparkling in her eyes. Either one of them could die attempting to destroy The Order of the Satyr. They did not have time for courting. They needed to live, to be alive, and to feel alive.

  “To love,” she sighed, as she absentmindedly fingered a fuchsia colored veil draped sheerly two inches below her belly button and falling over her mound. It followed her length to just above her ankles. Her soft belly protruded in just the right amount of enticing bareness for a seductive belly dance. Her hips were round enough to swing becomingly and her bottom plush enough to roll with an alluring display. It was her breasts that worried her. They were full globes, but one was a bit higher than the other and she had no deeply plunging cleavage. Joelle raised her arms. She could see one dark nipple through the light-blue silk scarf over it. That was better, she decided, with her arms high, her breasts looked level and her cleavage appeared.

  Saxon had invited her to his home for dinner this evening, a romantic evening he called it. “And I have a surprise for you, Saxon.” Joelle teased the mirror with a seductive look as she shimmied her body and the bangles jingled all around. She was going to seduce Saxonhurst, the Marquess of Hartely, this evening. And if he did not start pulling the veils off her body until she was entirely nude, there was going to be trouble.

  Saxon paced his formal dining room. The table was set elaborately with gold and crystal, the wine was breathing, candles were lit, and a fire flamed in the fireplace. The gas lamps about the room were turned down low and besides an elegant dinner, there was champagne and chocolate cooling on a table next to an intimate settee he had placed by the fire.

  He brooded over the fact that it was deucedly hard to do romance, of the courting and wooing nature, without tumbling into heated sexual passions. Everything, with a woman that he loved in his mind, alluded to sex. He wondered exactly what two people could do romantically for a full evening while excluding sex? Especially when all he wanted to do was to make love to Joelle for hour upon hour. It was on his mind constantly.

  Saxon was sincerely glad that he was wearing the full elegant trappings of an English nobleman this evening. He should be taking Joelle out to dine, to dance. It would be much better to stay focused on his goal of treating her like the respected and honored woman he intended to marry, easier if other people surrounded them. He just could not bring himself to share her though, even in simple social gatherings where it would be easier to respectfully court her.

  He was a selfish bastard, but
determined. He might never be able to wipe away his near rape of Joelle in the lewd sexual ceremony they’d been forced to perform by The Order of the Satyr. Nevertheless, he could show the woman he loved that he cherished her, respected her, and wanted to hold her up upon a pedestal of honor in his life. It was the right thing to do for the mother of his future children, however he was beginning to become disillusioned, because it was obvious that Joelle was not sailing upon the same boat as he was.

  At first he’d thought that the stress of trying to bring The Order down could be upsetting her. That was until last night, when the first clue came to him that his Lady Firefly was perturbed at the sexual constraints of noble courting. It seemed that perhaps, while he was allowing her tender time to recover from their ordeal and find a romantic footing in their relationship, Joelle had a whole different outlook.

  Still, he denied her.

  Denied them actually, and he tried to tell himself that it was because he knew better, that he was thinking more clearly than Joelle. In time she would look back and thank him, saying that she’d not been herself in the upheaval of events, and she was glad that he was stronger and wiser. His justification had actually stood him strong, until last night, in the middle of a sleepless night, when he’d finally had to admit the real reasons to himself. After much soul searching, he was just not certain he could tell the real reasons that he’d discovered to Joelle.

  Could he be so harsh to her, or was it better to keep to the idea that he wanted to court her and she deserved it? It was not an untruth, just not the entire truth, and he had himself convinced it was still the best way. At least until after they dealt with The Order, and the outcome showed them both alive and well.