by Gaelen Foley
“Isn’t that lovely?”
The music also drifted in and out of his awareness, different groups of musicians posted here and there around the sprawling palace. Here a violin trio; there a harp and flutist. In through the window floated the strains of the Regent’s favorite German brass band playing out on the terrace that overlooked the gardens.
All of them faded behind him as Jordan continued following Albert. Ahead, the duke was walking at a more determined pace now.
Twin antechambers with pristine marble floors flanked the first entrance hall where guests were still arriving beneath the great portico. Albert sauntered past it all, heading toward the Regent’s private apartments within Carlton House, if Jordan recalled correctly. He was fairly sure this was the way they had come the first time he had visited, accompanying Mara to present her royal friend with the Gerrit Dou.
Taking his final swig of champagne, Albert went into a room off the far left corner of the antechamber.
Jordan made a cautious approach, sidling up to the double doors of the room. A quick glimpse around the corner revealed a grand Gothic library.
A number of guests were sitting around inside or chatting since it was quieter there.
Jordan furrowed his brow to hear Albert make an announcement to the others who had sought refuge there.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention,” he said smoothly, “His Royal Highness will be making a toast on the Grand Staircase in a few moments to Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. Catalani is here and she has agreed to sing a song for the happy couple after the toast. Not to be missed. Yes, that’s correct,” he answered an older woman who asked a question Jordan could not make out.
“You may wish to begin moving toward the Octagon, for directly after Catalani sings, I hear they are going to start the dancing.”
The guests apparently did not dream that this might be some sort of ruse but took his advice to heart and began hurrying out of the library.
Jordan was bemused. With a stealthy glance around the corner of the doorway, he saw Albert momentarily distracted by a guest who wouldn’t leave. As the duke repeated his announcements in a louder tone to an elderly couple, Jordan seized the moment to slip into the library while the rest were leaving.
At once, he stole behind the nearest large pillar, maneuvering out of sight.
A moment later, Albert passed nearby, elegantly shooing the last of the guests out of the library. Then he shut the library door behind them and locked it.
Immediately, Albert flew to the window, whipping the curtains shut. He moved from one to the next, then blew out the candles around the room, leaving only one small flame to work by.
Jordan welcomed the dark as an aid to his cover, while Albert, still unaware of his presence, strode to a small door at the far corner of the library.
Staring at Albert by the dim glow of the single candle he carried, Jordan saw him take a key out of his waistcoat.
He could feel the dandy’s nervousness, could hear it in the way he fumbled with the lock.
What the hell is he after? Jordan crept closer, rounding the pillar—until Albert suddenly stopped, perhaps sensing another presence in the room.
He turned around and searched the darkness. “Who’s there?” he demanded in a taut voice.
Jordan held his breath and did not move.
After a moment, Albert cursed under his breath and seemed to conclude it was only a figment of his own guilty conscience. Then he resumed his frantic scramble to open the door.
Waiting, his back to the pillar, Jordan listened until he heard the lock click, the handle turn, and the door squeak slightly being opened.
In a gilded mirror above one of the library’s fireplaces, he could see that Albert had entered a small, private room with a desk and file cabinets.
Given that they were so near the Regent’s private quarters, Jordan could not help but conclude grimly that Albert had just broken into His Royal Highness’s personal business office.
Albert set his candle on the desk, again took out the key, and opened the top drawer.
Jordan watched in ice-cold patience as Albert riffled through the papers in the Regent’s desk, his face a pale mask of dread by the flickering light of his candle. It was not the look of a man who was doing something he wanted to do but rather something he had been ordered to do, compelled. Indeed, what Albert was doing right now could get him hanged. He was looking for something, but what was he trying to find?
As the seconds ticked by, Jordan debated over whether to step out of the shadows and confront the dandy or to wait and see what he might do next.
All of a sudden, a knock sounded on the library door.
Inside the royal cabinet, Albert froze.
“Hullo? Is anybody in there?” a voice called.
Jordan looked over in horror.
Mara!
“Jordan, are you in there? I thought I saw you come this way.” She knocked again. “Jordan? Open up! You promised me a dance. They’re about to play the waltz!”
Good God, she followed me!
While Jordan cringed, he could practically feel Albert absorbing Mara’s words. Suddenly, Albert was scrambling to put the papers back into the drawer, hurriedly locking it, and whisking his candle off the Regent’s desk. He pulled the office door shut behind him and hastened to lock it, too.
This done, he took a few steps toward the center of the library and, with Mara still knocking, peered into the darkness in every direction; he held up his candle.
“Falconridge?” he whispered in angry demand. “Are you in here? Falconridge! By God, speak if you are here!”
Albert waited.
Jordan held his breath.
Damn it. This was exactly why he never mixed his work with pleasure. Whatever progress he had made with Albert, she had just unwittingly destroyed.
His only hope was that Albert would conclude that Mara was mistaken.
She knocked again. “Jordan?”
Albert sounded like he wasn’t sure what to believe. “If you are in here, Falconridge, you will be sorry.”
Jordan did not say a word.
He did not breathe.
He could feel Albert peering into the shadows, searching for him, but when Mara banged on the door again, the duke hissed a curse under his breath and left empty-handed, exiting by another door between a pair of columns on the other end of the room.
Jordan deduced that Albert would return to the party as his safest option after all his sneaking around. He would want to be seen, to assure the world nothing out of the ordinary was going on.
Meanwhile, Jordan eased out of his place of concealment and went to answer the door before Mara drew any more unwanted attention.
Her knocking was beginning to sound more testy than good-natured. “Jordan, I know you’re in there! Are you feeling ill?”
There was an ominous pause as he approached the door between them.
“I saw you come this way,” she informed him through the door. “Jordan—are you in there alone?”
His eyes widened. She feared he had slipped away with another woman? Good Lord!
But he had seen her jealous before—at Delilah’s dinner party. If Mara had indeed seen him come in here, then she was going to be suspicious about why she was being ignored.
And he could not have that.
“There you are!” she exclaimed the second he opened the door. “What are you doing in there?”
“Waiting for you.” Jordan grabbed her wrist, pulled her into the room, straight into his arms, and kissed her heartily.
Change the subject…a favorite spy technique.
It never failed.
Chapter 11
With the Regent’s cryptic warning to be careful with Jordan ringing in her ears, Mara had been alarmed when he had failed to answer the door. What exactly had the Regent meant by that, anyway? Did her royal friend know something about Jordan she did not—something that might’ve come out, perhaps, wh
ile the men were playing cards?
Good God, did he have another woman?
He well might, she had thought in sudden dread. After all, she did not see him all the time. They were lovers, but they each still had their own independent lives.
It was not simply that she did not trust in happiness to stay. It was that she could swear sometimes there was something Jordan wasn’t telling her.
Fortunately, his smooth, deep kiss dissolved her fleeting doubts and left her feeling silly and relieved.
“Better?” he asked, his voice a husky murmur in the dark.
“What are you up to?” she whispered as she nuzzled the tip of his nose with her own. “You looked so sneaky when I saw you passing through the Octagon.”
“‘Sneaky’?” he echoed, arching a brow.
“You heard me.” Still vaguely suspicious, she peered past him into the darkened room. A single candle glowed on a heavy library table several yards away. “When I saw you coming down the stairs, I thought you meant to join me. But you just ignored me and walked right on, as if you had something more important to do.” She gave him a pout.
“No, darling, I had a better idea. That’s all. It took you long enough to get here,” he added with a wicked smile.
“Well, you could’ve told me you wanted me to come with you!”
“So everyone else could see us leave together? Think of the talk, Lady Pierson,” he scolded in silken roguery. “Besides, I thought this made it slightly more exciting. You like excitement, Mara. Don’t you? I know you used to,” he whispered as he trailed his fingertip down her chest to her nipple through her gown.
She stared at him, her lips still moist from his kiss. “What did you have in mind?”
He smiled, looking every inch a true member of the wild Inferno Club. “Take a guess.”
“Really, Lord Falconridge!” she chided rather breathlessly. “In the middle of the royal ball? There are a thousand people out there.”
“So many, they’ll never notice the two of use are gone.”
He kissed her again; she did not object.
“You look so beautiful, Mara. I’ve been wanting you all night,” he confessed in a sensuous whisper, gliding his lips against hers.
Mara quivered.
But she still found his behavior slightly odd though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
“Be careful with him.”
He tilted his head with a look of amusement, studying her. “What’s the matter, darling?”
“I don’t know.” She stared at him. “Something doesn’t seem quite right.”
“Why did you ask me if I was alone? You did not seriously think I was in here with another woman?”
“Well—” As soon as he spoke her fears aloud, she realized how daft it sounded. But as her cheeks colored, she attempted to mount a defense nonetheless. “There are more than a few ladies out there staring at you tonight!”
“Really? I had no idea! Where?” he teased, glancing around.
“You rogue!” She smacked him lightly and he laughed.
“There’s only one woman here that interests me, my pet. Now, are we going to stand here and squabble over nothing or take advantage of our hiding place?” he purred, capturing her elbow and drawing her close until her body cradled his.
His tall, hard frame against her had the usual effect, but she huffed at his teasing and turned her blushing face away from the soft, inquisitive brush of his lips. “Why did it take you so long to answer the door?”
“I couldn’t find it after I’d blown out the candles.”
“And why did you blow out the candles?”
“Why do you think?” He kissed away her slight pout.
She pulled back just a bit to look into his eyes.
He gazed so deeply into hers, so seductively. “You have no one to be jealous of, Mara. I’m all yours. Shall I prove it to you?” He captured her face between his hands and lowered his lips hungrily to hers.
As Jordan savored her mouth, he did not seriously expect Mara to let him ravish her in the Regent’s library in the middle of a royal ball.
It never hurt to ask, of course, but he fully expected to be denied. Then he would take her back out to the Octagon like a good boy and dance with her, as promised.
When he kissed her, however, he got more than he bargained for. As she twined her arms around him slowly and opened her rosy lips against his, enticing him, he realized in shock the lady was game for it.
Amazement at her bold advance flickered in his brain, but when she pressed the back of his head, pulling him down to deepen his kiss, he certainly needed no prompting. He pulled her against him, molding the hourglass shape of her warm, sensuous body as their mouths joined in an intoxicating duel of tongues. His pulse slammed as she thrust her champagne-flavored tongue into his mouth; he savored it, then he did the same to her.
He could taste her passion in her kiss and the fierce claim she had laid on him as she ran her hands in high satin gloves all over him—possessively—his head, his shoulders, his arms and chest. Every touch was clearly meant to make him understand that, in her mind, he belonged to her.
Jordan had no problem with that.
Transported with delight at her aggression, he let out a low gasp of pleasure when her dainty, wandering hand suddenly cupped his already-swollen cock.
He let out a short, dizzied laugh, hardening instantly the rest of the way against her grasp. “I was not expecting that,” he panted in amusement.
“Mmm,” she responded as she rubbed him hotly through his trousers. In seconds flat, her fire had shredded and consumed all his cool calculation of a few minutes ago.
He dragged his eyes open and looked at her, her slave. “Where do you want me?” he whispered. “On the floor? On the couch? Standing up? Over there, perhaps?” He jerked a fervent nod toward the nearby pillar.
She followed his glance then flicked her lashes downward with a little smile; coyly demure, she turned away and sauntered toward the pillar, drawing off the long glove that he had started to undo.
With a naughty glance over her shoulder, Mara dropped her glove daintily behind her, a coquette’s favor that he was clearly intended to retrieve.
Jordan stared, adoring this new, unbridled Mara, the lover he had freed in her. He was mesmerized by the sensual way she moved.
Then she leaned her back against the very pillar where he had hidden from Albert not long ago, her pose lifting her breasts as she offered herself to him with a sultry stare. “Come and get me.”
Jordan was certain in that moment that without years of spy training to hide his emotions, his very jaw would have hit the floor. Is this a dream?
He went to her, a man in a trance, stepping past her glove to collect instead the delicate hand it had clad.
Lifting her bared hand from her side, he brought it ardently to his lips: first, a gallant peck on her knuckles, then he turned her wrist to press a more serious kiss into the soft flesh of her palm.
He closed his eyes and enjoyed a most exquisite feast, nibbling the fleshy curve at the base of her thumb and the tender lines of her hand that fortune-tellers claimed to read, tasting her wrist, savoring every elegant fingertip.
When she moaned, watching him, he moved closer, taking hold of her waist and shifting his attentions to the white, silky chest that had been tempting him all night.
Her daringly low-cut ball gown was in the first stare of fashion, to be sure, but what chiefly held his interest was the lush female flesh the gown adorned.
That tiny bodice in particular.
There wasn’t much to it, a layer of rose satin stretched across little more than the lower halves of her breasts. Her nipples were barely covered, not even a necklace to mar that delectable expanse of milky skin. Just beneath her round, generous bosom, a sash marked the start of her skirts as well as the invisible corselet beneath it. The light stays nipped in her waist but, praise God, did not restrict her breasts, merely lifted them a bit for present
ation, not that she needed any such help at all, he thought, devouring her with his stare.
One mere layer of fragile satin, and another, of even more delicate batiste—the requisite chemise beneath her gown—these were all that stood between him and the breasts he hungered for. Sporting with her nipples through her gown, he watched them swell behind the fabric, felt them harden eagerly, poking against his thumbs as they grew—like his craving to take them in his mouth.
“Uh, Jordan, please.” Her groan expressed the perfect echo of his lust-filled thoughts.
He slipped his trembling hand into her gown. He had to force himself to be careful. But by God, if he ripped that damned dress, he’d take up needle and thread and mend it himself if he had to. He would not be denied.
Whatever it took. He just needed a taste of those luscious nipples now. He sank to his knees; she relaxed against the pillar; and while a thousand people, royals included, milled about a few rooms away, he freed her breasts, one by one, and abandoned himself to his own private feast, fit for a king. He was soon so caught up in this splendid gluttony that at first, he barely noticed the naughty little foot in a satin dancing slipper that had crept up from the floor to caress his groin.
But one teasing pass of Mara’s ankle, foot, and toe gently fondling his solid prick riveted Jordan’s full attention. When she had played at this for a moment, taunting his member to giant, throbbing proportions, he could take no more and captured her foot in his palm, while a husky laugh escaped his lips, muffled by the silken curve of her breast. “Ever the vixen,” he pretended to chide, though his tone was adoring.
She rested her head back on the pillar with a needy wince. “I shall perish of want if you don’t make love to me soon, Falconridge.”
“By all means, my lady.” As he rose from his knees to oblige her, he registered increasing guilt for his lies, mingled with the wild lust driving him. He could think of nothing beyond joining his body with hers.
He picked her up with a sweeping motion and carried her over to the heavy Gothic library table, where the last remaining candle burned.
Mara closed her eyes as he laid her down on it and undulated against the hard surface in sensuous anticipation, waiting hungrily for him.
