A Most Unsuitable Man

by Mara

  Why did he find it so hard to be joyful? What was the darkness that surrounded him? It had to be that scandal, and she should cease avoiding it and ask Lady Thalia. After all, money could work miracles. It might wipe the shadows away.

  Tomorrow, she vowed. She would ask Lady Thalia tomorrow. She staked and won, praying she wouldn’t uncover too dark a sin. She wanted to weave this magical circle tight and hold Fitz safe within it. Wind him in golden streamers of joy and keep him forever in the light.

  Chapter 13

  Late that night Fitz walked the grounds of Cheynings, his breath puffing silver, and icy remnants of snow crunching beneath his boots. He needed to check the area before he slept, but he also needed to escape the too-close proximity to Damaris. He’d hoped the winter night air would blow away the nonsense filling his mind.

  It wasn’t working.

  He’d been aware all day of her attention on him. He’d tried to keep his distance, but she would not be warned away. Not surprising when he kept responding, dammit.

  Devil take it, he was thinking about her again, and it was like opening a pot of jam near a wasps’ nest. Now there was nothing else in his mind but buzz. A villain could probably creep up behind him and garotte him with ease.

  He’d vastly overestimated his control. That kiss in the Little Library should never have happened; nor should he have invited her to call him Fitz. An evening of lighthearted gambling games had been disastrous. He was besotted with her and impassioned by her—by her quick wits, her forthright manner, her idiotic courage, and her piratical determination to get what she wanted.

  If the world were different, he’d kneel at her feet and beg to be hers, but the world was as it was. He was as he was, rightly burdened by his sin.

  He looked up at the unhelpful moon in a sky full of mysterious stars. Ash was fascinated by the reality of the planets and stars—where they were, what they were. Fitz preferred them to be a mystery, up who knew how high, a constant reminder that there was indeed more in heaven and earth than the obvious.

  They helped clear his mind. For his own sake and Damaris’s, he must go far away. To be free to do that, he must first ensure Ash’s safety, which meant finding any documents relating to Betty Crowley and her child.

  All the clues pointed to there having been a secret marriage, and that spelled disaster. No wonder the king was distressed. No wonder some people wanted Ashart dead.

  It would be impossible to prove that such a marriage hadn’t happened, so the best solution would be to find the proof that it had. Once found, it could be destroyed, preferably in the king’s presence. It was the only way to end all danger.

  He thought Damaris might be putting together the pieces. What keen wits she had....

  He blocked that, but not before he remembered her pointing out that anything of importance would be in the dowager’s keeping. She was right.

  He smiled at the memory of her suggesting he steal the papers. Piracy must run in the blood.

  He sucked in a breath. He mustn’t think of her!

  He walked a circuit of the house, making sure his guards were in place. He finally entered the house by a side door, which he locked after himself. The corridor he stood in was pitch-dark, but he knew the house well enough to make his way to the service stairs and back to his room. There he took out his lantern and assembled it.

  It was a variation on a smuggler’s lantern, designed to provide light when necessary, but to show little when closed. Fitz had ordered this one made half-size and hinged so that it collapsed flat when not in use. In a pinch, he could carry it in his pocket.

  He quickly transformed the lantern into the familiar peaked-roof shape and opened the door to set a candle in place. Once it was lit, he closed the door so that only a hint of light showed through the smoke holes at the top.

  Putting the lantern aside, he took off his boots, replacing them with soft leather slippers that were perfect for silence in the night. He substituted fine-grain leather gloves for the sturdier ones he’d worn outside. The house was cold, and he couldn’t risk clumsiness. A muff, he thought with a wry smile, might be a useful accessory for a thief.

  He made his way down to the hall with the help of only the thin moonlight. The air was cold enough to prickle his skin, but all was silent.

  Too silent. He realized that the long-case clock on the wall had wound down. Cheynings often made him think of a mausoleum. Perhaps that was why he had a strange feeling of being watched. He sensed movement and glanced up the stairs, but nothing disturbed the moonlit shadows.

  Ghosts. That was all Cheynings needed.

  He shook his head. It was more likely mice. Cheynings needed cats, but the dowager detested them.

  He turned to the left, where two doors led into her suite of five rooms. The right-hand door led to the dining room, and the left to the adjacent drawing room. There was a door from the drawing room into her bedchamber, with a dressing room beyond. That room had a door into a back corridor, but he shouldn’t need it.

  The most likely place for papers was the office, which lay beyond the dining room, but it would be damnable to search. Moreover, he couldn’t believe that the dowager would leave explosive documents there, even in a locked drawer. She’d want to keep such documents safe, but also treat them with reverence and be able to take them out in privacy to cherish.

  That meant that the likeliest spot was the bedchamber, the most dangerous place to invade. He considered leaving the search until daytime, but that wouldn’t help. Servants and the dowager herself could be in and out all day.

  He had to do it now. She’d often boasted of sleeping well. A result of a virtuous life and hard work, she would say. Fitz had heard that a bit of opium helped. He hoped so.

  He’d made note earlier that the dining room door was in good condition and opened silently, so he hoped the drawing room one would be the same. It was, and he was in without noise. The curtains were up, so faint moonlight allowed him to navigate to the bedchamber door.

  It, too, opened without a squeak, allowing him into the pitch-dark room. He stepped inside, feeling thick carpet beneath his shoes. Good. He should be able to move around quietly.

  A noise froze him. After a breathless moment he relaxed. It was a kind of snuffling snore. He waited, and after a count of three he heard it again. The noise was in front of him, so that must be where the bed was. A clock ticked to his right, probably on the mantelpiece. He closed the door with slow care....

  A tinkling noise almost made him jump out of his skin.

  The clock had begun to chime midnight. When it finally settled to silence, Fitz listened, one hand still on the handle so he could make a lightning escape.

  The light snore ruffled on. The dowager was too accustomed to her clock to be wakened by it, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be roused by an unusual noise. The mind was very clever in that way.

  He waited several minutes to be sure she was asleep, then walked forward until he encountered the heavy curtains around the bed. He followed them around the three sides, confirming that the hangings were completely drawn. Only then did he open one door of the lantern.

  His nerves were still jumping, which was strange, since this was considerably less dangerous than most other searches he’d made. He doubted the dowager kept a pistol beneath her pillow, and if she did she’d be unlikely to shoot him if she woke. She couldn’t summon guards to haul him off to prison and torture. His discovery here couldn’t cause a diplomatic disaster.

  But it would be disastrous enough.

  She’d order him from the house, and Ash would find it hard to prevent it. He might not want to unless Fitz could explain his behavior, which, by his promise of silence, he could not easily do.

  If Ash stood by him, the situation would be worse. Ash would leave for London, which would be hazardous, and would also mean abandoning the most likely location of the papers.

  Fitz steadied himself and began the search. The room was sparsely furnished, and his attenti
on went immediately to a lady’s writing desk, which was of a type that surprised him. The dowager’s office desk was massive and plain, but this one was a delicate piece with slender legs, decorated panels, and carvings. A secret taste for frivolity? He doubted it. All the decoration would serve to hide secret compartments and catches, however. He surveyed it, keeping track of the regular soft snores.

  The key was obligingly in the lock, so he turned it, making only the slightest click, and raised the top. Paper, ink, sand, sealing wax. Pigeonholes with folded letters. Secret papers would not be in the open, not even here.

  He eyed the writing surface and the dimensions of the desk, seeing a number of places where there might be a little extra space. He put the lantern on the floor, took off his gloves, and ran his fingers beneath the carved front edge. He pressed, pulled, pushed, gently at first, then more firmly.

  This time the click was loud and a snuffle broke off with a snort. “What...”

  The voice behind the bedcurtains sounded half-asleep, but Fitz took no risks. He closed the desktop, picked up his lantern, and moved silently to hunch down at the foot of the bed, shutting the lantern door as he settled there. Whichever side of the hangings she opened, she wouldn’t see him. If she climbed out of bed he could creep around to the opposite side.

  But damn it all to Hades, in the blackness the tiny glimmer from the top of the lantern might give him away. He couldn’t extinguish it without opening the thing, and if he squeezed out the flame, there was always a smell from the dying smoke. She’d cry for help, servants would come running, and he would be trapped here.

  “Who’s there!” the dowager demanded. Curtains rattled apart—to his right. “Jane? Is that you? What are you doing, you stupid woman?”

  He was already easing left. Time to slip out through the drawing room door. Even if she heard him, she’d not see him. He was pushing to his feet when the curtains on the side closest to him rattled. He whipped back down at the foot.

  “Who’s there? Come out. Reveal yourself!”

  Plague take the old dragon, though he had to admire her courage. Perhaps she did have a pistol under the pillow. Perhaps it was even now primed and pointed.

  “Come out, I say!”

  At any moment she was going to cry for help, and if servants hadn’t already been disturbed they’d come then. And here he was, pinned like a ferret in a trap. All he could do was wait to see which way she went, and hope to dash out before she could identify him.

  Just how many six-foot-tall men with blond hair were there in this house? After surviving years of this sort of thing against far more skillful foes, he was about to be done in by an old lady in a freezing, rundown house because of a damn stupid saga of royal sin and folly....

  A thump somewhere startled him.

  Then a shriek.

  Thump, thump, thump...

  It sounded as if someone had fallen down stairs. He rose to help, then realized he couldn’t.

  Deathly silence.

  Literally.

  A chill swept over him. Had that scream sounded like Damaris?

  The dowager was muttering and moving, and he could hardly concentrate enough to track what she was doing. Climbing out of bed on his left.

  Move to the right.

  Vague sounds of her finding and putting on a robe. His head was pounding with the need to dash out through the dressing room to see if that had been Damaris, and if she was safe.

  A door slammed somewhere far away.

  The drawing room door opened and stumping footsteps moved away. “What’s going on?” the dowager demanded from a distance.

  Fitz was already sprinting into the dressing room, searching desperately for the service door that had to be there. Open the lantern, you dolt! There,

  As he ran into the corridor he heard the dowager exclaim, “Lord save us!” All sense of direction fled his mind, and he ran the wrong way before correcting and catapulting into the hall.

  “Servants! Ashart! Someone!” the dowager was bellowing. All around, Fitz heard slamming doors, hurrying feet, voices.

  He raced to the body sprawled from the lowest step of the grand staircase to the checkered floor. White nightgown. Dark robe. Long dark hair in a plait.

  Damaris!

  He slid to his knees, checking for breath. “She’s breathing. Thank God.”

  “Of course she’s breathing,” the dowager snapped. “I saw that. What’s wrong with her?”

  “Presumably she fell down the stairs.” He was feeling for bumps on Damaris’s small, delicate head.

  “You are insolent, sir. I always thought so. And so is she. What’s she doing wandering the house at night? I should never have had anything to do with such a creature. She was never worthy....”

  He ignored her ranting as he felt for damage, aware of other people gathering, exclaiming, and chattering. He knew now what Ash had felt like when Genova had seemed close to death. He wanted to gather Damaris into his arms and plead with her to talk to him, to come to her senses, to live. Wanted to shower her with healing kisses.

  “Damaris,” he said, stroking tendrils off her pale face. “Come on. Speak to me. Where does it hurt?”

  She moaned and her eyelids fluttered. She looked up at him.

  Her moan wasn’t very convincing, and her eyes revealed hidden laughter.

  He just managed to stifle a groan of his own. He was going to throttle her. For the moment he turned her face toward his chest. “Hush, I don’t think there’s any serious damage.”

  Genova was there then, kneeling by their side. “Can you move your arms and legs, Damaris?”

  Damaris looked at her, her expression better controlled. “I think so,” she whispered pathetically, flexing arms and legs. “Just a little sore.”

  Only when Genova rearranged the rumpled clothing did Fitz realize that he’d just watched the flexing of a lovely leg, a pale, slender, but smoothly muscled leg that was doing nothing to help him regain his wits.

  The damned fool had thrown herself down the stairs to provide him with an escape. Had that sense he’d had earlier been awareness of her watching him?

  Ash knelt beside Fitz. “You’re sure she’s all right?”

  “As best I can tell.”

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear.”

  Here came Thalia fluttering down the stairs, adding another candle to a collection of them. The hall probably hadn’t been this bright at nighttime in a generation. Most of the sparse household seemed to be here.

  “Sleepwalking, were you, dear?” asked Thalia, in danger of falling herself with her collection of trailing shawls. Ash hurried to help her.

  “I think so,” Damaris said in a tone of weak confusion, but she shot Fitz another wicked glance. Throttle. Definitely.

  “Be off with you!” the dowager barked to the gathering servants. “I’ll not accept poor service tomorrow because of this folly. Be off, be off!”

  As they melted away, she turned her guns on Damaris. “Sleepwalking, indeed. Sneaking about, more likely. I awoke thinking something amiss.”

  “Why would I be sneaking around?” Damaris demanded, perhaps a little too vigorously for her part. “Especially,” she added, sitting up and wincing, “as this house is so cold and damp.”

  He wanted to applaud her spirit, but instead he shrugged out of his coat and put it around her shoulders.

  “Now you’ll freeze,” she said with a sniff that he thought could well be real. Her feet were bare.

  “Mr. Fitzroger,” the dowager demanded, “why are you fully dressed at gone midnight?”

  Oh, damnation. “I went for a walk, Lady Ashart.”

  “Outside?”

  She made it sound like proof of insanity. “I like fresh air.”

  “What is that?” she asked, pointing.

  He turned and saw his lantern lying on its side, the candle out. For the first time in years he felt close to panic, and the dowager was sniffing for a criminal like a terrier after a rat.

  He picked up
the lantern and opened one door. “My own design, Lady Ashart. Ideal for lighting the way along paths on a dark night.”

  She glared at him, gave a thwarted snort, and marched back into her own rooms.

  “Good thing,” Ash said, “she didn’t notice that you went for your midnight walk in your slippers. Which are remarkably unaffected by the adventure.”

  Fitz glanced at the footwear. It was the final bloody straw. When had he last been caught in such an awkward situation and spun a tale so open to contradiction? And now Ash clearly had serious questions to ask.

  “I need to stand up,” Damaris said, holding out a hand to him. Deflecting the conversation? What did she know? What did she suspect? Why the devil hadn’t she been virtuously asleep?

  “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” he asked.

  “Nothing to signify.”

  “All the same, I’ll carry you back to your bed.” A touch of gold to come out of this debacle, he thought as he gathered her into his arms, every soft, slender, lissome, desirable inch of her.

  “Very wise,” said Thalia, turning to go back upstairs. “You’ll probably be stiff tomorrow, dear. I took a tumble once and felt no injury at first, but oh, how I ached the next day! I have an effective liniment. Your maid can rub it into your legs and back.”

  Fitz stifled a groan at the image. The very weight of Damaris was arousing. Carrying a woman upstairs was no easy task, but he loved having her so close to him, so dependent on him. Trusting him.

  Genova hurried to where Ash was already escorting Lady Thalia, trying to avoid another casualty.

  Fitz took the opportunity to say, “I would like to beat you.”

  He’d like to do many other things, all a great deal more pleasant, but that could be part of the reason he felt so violently about this jape.

  Her plait lay down her front, and he’d never guessed her hair was so long. It must hang past her waist when loose. He wanted to drown in that hair, to kiss down the arch and up the instep of her pale, elegant feet.

  Yet her plait and simple clothing suggested schoolroom innocence. Devil take it, despite her twenty-one years, Damaris Myddleton could as well have been raised in a convent. He was a cad to be lusting after her.