“The door is open,” she enunciated, trying very hard to keep a grip on her sensibilities. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
His lips favored her throat with feather-light kisses, which followed along her jaw and up to the corner of her mouth. “Victoria,” he whispered, “kiss me.”
“But…don’t you—oh, my, that feels good—don’t you care that the man who killed…your brother may be dining at your table tonight?”
Sinclair captured her lips in a deep, hungry kiss. Fire spun though her as she slid her hands slowly up his chest and around his broad shoulders. He knew so much of the world, and she kept waiting for the moment when he would tire of her and her unending silliness; kept watching for any sign that he wanted to return to the exciting life he’d pursued for the past five years. All of her thrilled to his every touch and every soft-spoken word murmured in her ear. If tonight—now—he wanted to forget the spying and the hunting to be with her, she would be a fool to remind him of it again.
He pressed her down on the couch, his lean body stretched half on top of her. His mouth continued to plunder and explore hers until she could barely breathe, much less think.
“Sin, do you—”
They both started. Roman stood with his well-muscled arms stretched to either side of the doorway as he leaned into the room. His ruddy face darkened further as he spied them prone on the couch.
“Ah. Never mind me,” he grunted and grabbed the door handle to shut it soundly.
“I knew he was good for something,” Sinclair murmured, and slid lower to caress her bosom with his warm, soft lips.
Victoria tangled her fingers into his dark hair, arching up against him as he swept his arms under her and swiftly loosened the fastenings of her morning dress. As she lay back again he tugged it down to her waist and resumed kissing her bare breasts.
Shifting sideways, he allowed her to remove his coat and waistcoat and his cravat, now hopelessly crushed and wrinkled. His shirt proved more difficult, because he didn’t seem to want to stop kissing her and caressing her skin with his long, knowing fingers.
“Sinclair,” she finally protested, and yanked the shirt off over his head when he paused to look down at her.
“I want to be inside you,” he murmured, and took her breast into his mouth.
She moaned in helpless lust, wriggling her hips as he pulled the gown the rest of the way down. He went up on his knees, batting her hands away as she reached up to help him undo his breeches. She loved it when he was like this; she loved the way he seemed to want her so much he could barely keep his hands steady.
As soon as he freed himself, he nudged her knees apart and sank down again, entering her as he did so. She moaned again, this time in satisfaction. Keeping most of his weight on his elbows, he leaned down to kiss her again, open-mouthed, his tongue moving inside her with the same rhythm as the heated thrusts of his hips. Victoria dug her fingers into his strong back, relishing the sensation of him moving so strongly and deeply inside her.
Her body knew his now, and she began to pulse as she felt him moving close to release. He lifted his head and looked down at her, his eyes dark with passion and desire, as he came with a last deep thrust and she joined him in ecstasy.
“We’ve crushed your guest list,” he noted breathlessly, tugging it from beneath her.
Chuckling, Victoria brushed dark hair from his eyes and pulled his face down to kiss him again. “No harm done.”
He hoped that was true. It was small comfort that he hadn’t quite lied to her about Kingsfeld; he’d simply avoided answering her questions, and counted himself lucky to have gotten away with it. How long he could keep up the deception, he had no idea. She’d managed to uncover his other secrets without much difficulty.
She sighed, sliding her arms around his waist. “All right, Sinclair. Since you’ve gone to this much trouble to persuade me, I suppose I can tolerate Kingsfeld for one evening.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep him as far from you as possible.” At gunpoint, if necessary.
“No, you won’t. You don’t want to make anyone suspicious of anything. We’re all supposed to be a herd of happy, scandalous hedonists, aren’t we?”
“Some happier than others,” he whispered, kissing her ear. Slowly and regretfully he sat up, wondering whether he would ever feel sure enough about her safety to tell her how much he was coming to care for her. Soon, he told himself. As soon as he had Kingsfeld. As soon as he’d fulfilled his duty to Thomas and could be reasonably assured of staying alive long enough to begin his duties to her. “You are very understanding.”
“And you are very persuasive.”
He brushed a finger against her soft, smooth cheek. “I’m glad you think so. Now, I do have one errand to run today.”
Victoria sat up beside him, her violet gaze serious. She opened her mouth to say something, then obviously changed her mind. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
So she still wasn’t sure what he was up to. “Would you miss me?” he asked softly, kissing her again.
“Yes. And it would ruin my seating arrangements.”
With a chuckle, Sinclair leaned down to gather his scattered clothes. “We can’t have that.”
Once they’d managed to return to some semblance of decorum, Sinclair rode to the House of Lords, where one of Thomas’s fine bottles of brandy convinced the clerk to produce five boxes of rejected proposals and treatises from the regular session of Parliament two years earlier. Though Sinclair suspected Thomas’s paper wouldn’t be among them, it took two hours of searching to confirm it. Thomas had authored several unsuccessful treatises, but none of them was as direct and defiant and as threatening to noble purses as the draft Victoria had found.
Waiting until the clerk became tired of the dust and bored with hovering about, Sinclair slipped into another room to search for a second set of records. This time he wasn’t making a random exploration in the hopes of stumbling across something. He knew precisely what he was looking for, and it took only a short time for him to find it.
The Earl of Kingsfeld had indeed divested himself of several minor shares of stock in minor companies with ties to France. What he had kept, though, was ownership of a company located a few miles outside of Paris—a company that manufactured parts for gas streetlamps.
Sinclair cursed. No wonder Kingsfeld had kept silent about his ownership of such an innocent, progress-minded business. Sin knew of the factory; he’d even visited it in the company of one of Bonaparte’s generals. And though pipes and fittings for streetlamps had been visibly stacked in a corner, he doubted even one single lamp had been constructed during the war. The factory had been too busy with its secondary task—making muskets. Muskets that had armed Bonaparte’s soldiers at Waterloo.
Swiftly Sin returned everything to its place, puttered in the storage room for another few minutes, thanked the clerk, and left. The angry, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach grew. He’d seen death and betrayal; he’d even participated, when the task had called for it. But he’d considered the earl a friend. He’d trusted him. And tonight the bastard would sit at his table—the table that used to belong to Thomas—and laugh and smile, and Sinclair would have to laugh and smile with him, because although he knew Kingsfeld had murdered Thomas, he still had no proof. He would find that proof, though, and soon—even if it killed him.
Something was terribly wrong. Victoria perched on the arm of the couch to chat with Lucy and Lionel, but most of her attention was on the laughing conversation at the other end of the room. Sinclair and Kit stood with Kingsfeld, all of them acting as though nothing untoward was going on at all. Kit, she could believe, but not the other two.
“…and of course, after Almack’s exploded, no one wanted to tell Lady Jersey about it.”
Victoria blinked and looked at Mr. Parrish. “What?”
“You were right,” Lucy said, sighing heavily and unsuccessfully hiding a grin. “She wasn’t listening at all.”
�
��I am so sorry.” Victoria clasped her friend’s hand. “You have my undivided attention.”
The girl giggled. “It’s all right. If I had a husband as splendid looking as Sinclair Grafton, I would spend all my time gazing at him, too.”
Lionel lifted an eyebrow. “I think I might be offended.”
Lucy blushed. “Oh, Lionel. It’s not—”
He put up his hand. “No. I will not be mollified. In fact, tomorrow I am going to speak to your father about it.”
“What?”
With a fond grin he kissed Lucy’s cheek. “Now who’s going to be ogling whom?” he asked, and strolled over to join another cluster of guests.
“Oh, my,” Lucy whispered, and burst into delighted laughter.
Victoria hugged her. “That’s splendid,” she said, chuckling. “And if he’s teasing, I will never forgive him.”
“Neither will I.” Lucy laughed again, tears welling in her eyes. “I will torture him terribly tomorrow. But tonight do you think I might ask Marguerite to play?”
Victoria took her arm. “I think that is a splendid idea.” She glanced toward her husband’s group again, though her gaze wasn’t on Sinclair. “I should love to dance.”
Her husband had promised he wouldn’t do any spying tonight, but she hadn’t made any such agreement. The Earl of Kingsfeld would eventually make a mistake. Waiting for it to happen, though, meant worrying about Sinclair every time he vanished for an hour, and fearing for the safety of Augusta and Christopher at every moment of the day and night. Perhaps, she could encourage Astin Hovarth into giving away something—anything—that would prove his guilt to Sinclair.
Convincing Marguerite to play was easy enough, especially when Kit volunteered to turn the pages for her. Deciding how to partner with Kingsfeld for a waltz presented more of a problem—until she remembered that she was, after all, Vixen Fontaine, who would say or do practically anything.
Squaring her shoulders, she swept up to the group of men. “Lord Kingsfeld,” she said, ignoring Sinclair’s abrupt step toward her, “I have decided to give you another opportunity to charm me.”
He smiled. “It would be my pleasure.”
Marguerite had already begun the waltz, so she allowed him to lead her into the middle of the room and slip his hand around her waist. She suppressed a shudder as she placed her hand in his. With a light pressure, he swung her into the dance. This was for Sinclair, she reminded herself as she looked up into Kingsfeld’s cool brown eyes. This was for them.
“We seem to disagree whenever we begin a conversation,” he said, returning her gaze evenly. “Perhaps we should refrain from any discussion at all.”
Victoria laughed. “I had considered the same thing, and I decided on a topic for which we both have admiration: Thomas Grafton.”
He didn’t flinch or look the least bit guilty. “But not his…drawings, of course.”
Reminding herself that she’d pretended to be charmed and flattered a thousand times, she nodded. “Not his drawings. Only the man himself.”
“Very well. And how shall we begin this pleasant conversation?”
“I shall say that in the short time I knew him, I never saw him dance. Both of his brothers, though, seem quite skilled. Do you know if he had a reason for not stepping onto the dance floor?”
“Well, my dear, I believe Thomas thought the waltz too forward. You and your friends undoubtedly didn’t attend the staid gatherings where more formal dances were favored.”
“That’s true,” she mused. “But you waltz, and very handsomely.”
“I’m not quite as conservative as Thomas was.”
She chuckled, glancing across the room as they twirled, to see Sinclair conversing with Lucien and his tall friend Crispin, and apparently not noticing her at all. “Sinclair has said Thomas was the most conservative man he ever knew. I wonder how the two of you remained such close friends.”
“Why do you wonder?”
It might have been her imagination, but she thought his hand tightened a little around hers. His expression didn’t change, but if he’d escaped suspicion for a murder, he wasn’t likely to panic over something she said. “It’s only that your tastes seem so much more…liberal. I would have thought you and Sinclair would have been the ones to become friends.”
“Sinclair wasn’t liberal; he was reckless. I find no appeal in that.” Kingsfeld must have seen something in her eyes, because he smiled. “Thankfully he has become more wise as he’s gotten older.”
Finally, an opening. “You must have thought his adventures in Europe very reckless indeed.” The last stanza of the waltz began, and she realized she was swiftly running out of time. “I know I did, until he told me his reasons.”
“And now?”
In her imaginings, drawing him into a confession had been much easier. “And now, I’m pleased you’re assisting him in his hunt to find Thomas’s murderer.” Stifling her desire to vomit, she leaned closer. “I admit, though, that I have my doubts about Marley’s guilt.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I think the killer must really have been someone quite stupid, because he left some papers behind. Marley is much more clever than that.”
She’d made him angry; she could see it in his eyes, and in the cold turn of his thin lips. Victoria held her breath, hoping with all her might that Marguerite would want to show off for Kit and repeat the last stanza with her famous flourish.
“The killer has evaded detection for two years, my dear. These…papers you refer to couldn’t have been much of anything, or they would have been used to bring the murderer to justice already.”
“Oh, I think they are the key,” she whispered in a conspiratorial tone. “I only just found them, though. Sinclair hasn’t even seen them yet. I was going to show him in the morning, as a surprise.”
Kingsfeld opened his mouth, and then closed it again. “I pray you’re right,” he finally murmured, “though you shouldn’t get your hopes—or Sin’s—up needlessly. Perhaps you should show these papers to me first. You wouldn’t want Sinclair to think you were silly, or merely trying to protect Marley.”
If her husband knew what she was doing, he would think her worse than silly. “I have no reason to protect Marley, my lord.”
“Of course you do. Sin told me he only went to ruin you that night in order to draw Marley out. Imagine his surprise when it didn’t succeed, and he had to take more drastic action.”
The waltz ended. Victoria was sure her heart stopped beating in the same moment. Everything inside her went cold and still and dead. “You are mistaken,” she managed, her mouth dry.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” the earl continued in a low, intimate tone. “Now, why don’t you show me those papers?”
A hand grasped her elbow from behind, and she jumped.
“Apologies, Vixen,” Alexandra said in her humortouched voice, “but you look as though you could use some air.”
“Yes, I could,” she blurted, grabbing Lex’s arm. She wasn’t about to show Kingsfeld anything. And even though he’d only been trying to fluster her, she still needed to think. If what he’d told her was true—
“Come on, my dear, you’re white as a sheet.”
As Marguerite began another tune, Victoria allowed Alexandra to lead her out of the drawing room and down the hallway into her animal-filled conservatory. They opened the tall glass doors, and the cool evening breeze flooded the room.
“Oh, that’s better,” Victoria said, sinking into a chair. Lord Baggles jumped onto her lap with his usual good timing, and she buried her face in his soft fur.
“You’re not just worn out.” Alexandra sat on the arm of the chair beside her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I was just warm.”
“Mm-hm. I should have realized. You’ve never been able to tolerate more than one dance in an evening, delicate and shy as you are.”
“Just be quiet, Lex. I need to think.”
“Do you want us all to leave?
Lucien can clear out a room in less than a minute. Believe me. I’ve seen him do it.”
Victoria grabbed her friend’s hand. “Don’t go.”
“All right. But you have to tell me what’s upset you so much.”
Mungo Park flapped over and perched on the back of the chair. “‘Kiss me again, Vixen,’” he squawked in his impression of Sinclair’s deep voice.
Victoria burst into tears.
“Uh-oh. What happened?”
She shouldn’t say anything. But she was so tired of all the secrets—especially if there wasn’t any point in her trying so hard to close this chapter of Sin’s life. “I think Sinclair only married me to spite Marley,” she sobbed.
“What? Did Kingsfeld tell you that?”
“Yes. And…and I know Sinclair hates Marley, and it would be very like him to do something so sneaky…but I…”
“But you love him,” Lex finished.
“No, I don’t. I would be stupid to fall in love with him if he didn’t mean anything by marrying me.”
“Of course he meant something by marrying you,” her friend soothed, squeezing her hand. “Why would Kingsfeld say something so awful? And why would Sinclair hate Marley?”
“I can’t tell you!”
“All right. But tell me this: who do you trust more—Kingsfeld or Sinclair?”
Wiping her eyes, Victoria straightened. “Sinclair,” she whispered.
“Then what’s the difficulty? Come, now. Take deep breaths. It’s not good for you to be so upset.”
Alexandra seemed rather keen on the subject of her health, which was somewhat odd. As Victoria’s thoughts cleared a little, she looked up at her friend. “Since when are you so worried over my health? I used to go riding in the rain, you know.”
For a long moment Alexandra looked at her with her calm, aquamarine gaze. “Perhaps I’m wrong, then.”
Victoria scowled and swiped at her damp cheeks again. “Wrong about what?”
Her friend sighed, humor touching her eyes. “To put it delicately, dear, when was the last time you…had your monthly courses?”
“Not since I’ve been married, of course.”
Meet Me at Midnight Page 27
