War Chest: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 5

by Lynne Connolly

“What if they have none? What if they are merely visiting? Or they do not wish their town houses opened when on a fleeting visit? Not every woman visiting the capital wants to hire a complete residence. Last year several ladies graced us with their presence. They occupy their own rooms at the club, so they need not mingle with the men should they not wish it. I thought society would have a collective apoplexy, and it is true certain portions of it continue to disparage us, but we are still successful.”

  “Not least of which is Amidei’s wish to provide a place respectable women can come without fear of molestation,” Marcus added. “It is in St. James’s, close to the palace, so it is not an address of which anyone may feel ashamed.” He gave her that smile that said he was sharing with her alone, the one she fondly imagined meant he took pleasure in her company. “Although Amidei is slandered for his choice to take an active part in the business.”

  “Why should I not?” the comte demanded. “It is my money, after all.”

  “Ah, but would you go down your own mines?” Marcus said.

  “Why not?” Fire flashed in those pale eyes. “How can I expect someone else to go there if I would not do it myself?”

  “That’s very forward thinking of you, sir,” she said. Picking up her wine glass, she took a fortifying sip of the rich red burgundy served with the second course. She’d taken enough to eat, but for appearance’s sake, she picked at what was left on her plate.

  She should find her presence here awkward, but she did not. Unused to having her opinions sought or valued, this was a novelty, but one she enjoyed. The idea of a club open to members of both sexes was stimulating enough, but more, they were forcing society to accept it.

  The servants efficiently cleared the table, removing the cloth before setting an elegant dessert there and changing the wines to a crisp white. Ruth took some fruit and sipped her wine while listening to the men talk politics and their personal affairs.

  From this she learned the comte, while speaking excellent English with only the faintest lilt of an accent, owed his title and his origin to Italy, and he appeared to be in possession of bottomless wealth. She learned they were old friends, but not where they met. That they welcomed her opinions on the matters they discussed. Either they tailored their conversation to include her or she knew more than she’d imagined, merely by a perusal of the newspapers. They vouchsafed scurrilous information about members of society she didn’t know if she should believe. They teased her until the clock chimed nine.

  Shocked that such a length of time should have passed, Ruth got to her feet. “I will leave you gentlemen alone,” she said, and curtseyed. “Thank you for a most interesting evening.”

  She turned to leave the room, but stopped dead at the comte’s next words. “Please don’t go, Miss Simpson. The night is young.”

  Forcing a polite smile to her face, she turned back. “I fear you mistake, sir. I am Miss Carter.”

  Meeting her eyes with his all-too perceptive silver ones, the comte said, “I think not.”

  The floor opened up under her feet. She stared at her hands, which she’d folded neatly in front of her. Her fingers were trembling. Unable to remain standing, she took her chair once more, head bowed.

  Her hands shook as she clasped them together. “When would you like me to leave?” She had lost. As she thought that, her heart plummeted even more. The boys, the duke––she had lost them all.

  When had the duke become so necessary to her? How had he worked his way inside her head, her mind? The children, yes, they were her flesh and blood. But him too?

  She lifted her head. “When did you know?” She addressed Marcus, not d’Argento.

  Marcus stared at her, eyes wide, mouth grim. “I did not, until just now. I won’t ask you how you knew, Amidei.”

  “I did what you should have done,” his friend said softly.

  Neither Marcus nor Ruth looked at him. Now she met Marcus’s accusatory gaze, she could not look away. “I’m sorry.” It didn’t sound like enough. She had inveigled her way into the household under false pretences. For all he knew she might have intended to spirit the babies away. He trusted her.

  “What relation are you to Rhea?”

  Ruth wet her lips. “I’m her sister.” Her voice came out as a thready pretence of its usual firm tones.

  Marcus bit his lower lip. “I see. What made you come here?”

  “I wanted to make sure the babies were well. They are, I am convinced of it.”

  D’Argento entered the fray, his voice breaking into the tension strung like a rope between Marcus and Ruth. “You did not come to seek revenge? Or to play mama?”

  Ruth shook her head, tears pricking her eyes. “My parents didn’t want to know anything about the babies. They are my nephews. I needed to know they were well looked after. That’s all, I swear.”

  Marcus asked the next question. “Then why not come as Ruth Simpson and merely ask?”

  She gripped her hands even more tightly together. “I thought you might not answer me, or throw me out on my ear.” She caught her breath on a sob and continued while she still could. “If you do, I cannot blame you. My parents wouldn’t acknowledge the boys existed, much less care for them. As far as they are concerned, Rhea made a rash mistake and was dead to them. They could not cope with a daughter who dragged the family’s reputation down.”

  “I see. Did you intend to take the children back to Cumbria?” D’Argento asked.

  She almost laughed. How could she do that? “No, sir. I have no means of my own, and my parents will not entertain them in the house.” It was a relief to turn her head and meet the cold, incisive gaze of the Italian. He was looking at her as if she had crawled out of the nearest gutter, but that was better than the hurt she sensed in Marcus.

  “I trusted you,” Marcus said. Already his voice had chilled.

  “I know. I am fully aware I didn’t deserve your trust. When I arrived, I thought you an ogre.”

  D’Argento’s sharp laugh felt like a slap across the face. “You’re not far wrong, at that. Lyndhurst has done some interesting things, but he has not yet left babies to die, at least not to my knowledge.” He turned his head to address Marcus. Ruth had the strong feeling of ceasing to exist. “Have you?”

  “You know I have not.” For the first time since she admitted her true identity, a note of emotion entered Marcus’s voice. A shame the emotion was anger, but it was better than the empty chill sweeping through Ruth like a winter wind. “I knew you forged your character references, but I trusted you when you said you were seeking an independent life.”

  “It was true!” she cried, finding the description still fit her. “It still is. I cannot return home. I don’t know if my parents would receive me.” Despite her efforts to hold them back, two fat tears spilled from her eyes and rolled down her face. Snatching up a napkin, she dabbed the tracks, but she would not stop, not yet. Once she left this room she would be lost, empty.

  Abruptly, she scraped her chair back and got to her feet. “I will pack. I won’t stay here past morning.” The stage passed through the village a mile away. She would catch it and head for London. Surely she could find something there?

  As she left the room she imagined she head him call her name, but she did not stop to find out.

  Chapter Eight

  “Give her time,” d’Argento said as Marcus started from his seat. “Let her cry in peace. No woman wants a man to see her in that state.”

  Marcus regained his seat. He wouldn’t give her too much time. She might do something stupid, like leave in the middle of the night. He would not stand for that. “She didn’t deserve that, Amidei.”

  “Just as you didn’t deserve an interloper in your house. Devil take it, man, her sister caused enough trouble. Why didn’t you take precautions of your own? What possessed you not to read her mind?” D’Argento reached for the decanter and poure
d himself a liberal glass of brandy.

  “I felt her resistance when I tried it,” Marcus said. “She has natural resistance to intrusion, and you know my thoughts about reading mind to mind. I despise myself for doing it. It is nothing short of thievery.”

  D’Argento snorted. “It is what we do. We possess the godhead inside us. It behooves us to use it. How do you expect to defeat our enemies if you remain wilfully blind to taking action? She could have been from Hecate, or any of the forces ranged against us.”

  “Why do you name that one?” Marcus said.

  “She is behind much of the enmity that faced us in London.” D’Argento sipped his drink. “I am sure of it. Either her, or some other powerful sorceress. Our enemies were helped by someone we have not yet discovered. We will.” He swore long and low, with an inventiveness Marcus reluctantly admired. “We lost good people because of her. Either lost them to death or to wasting their time guarding the Titans in captivity.”

  “It sounds odd,” Marcus said. “I was not brought up to think of myself as primarily a god. I was a man first, my mother always told me.”

  “Ah yes.” D’Argento raised his glass in a silent toast. “Your parents were heroes. I salute them both. Even more reason why you should be constantly on your guard.”

  “The children are mortal. They are no danger to us.”

  “You don’t know that. They could be the children of an immortal. You need immortals to care for them, and to watch them. I am sending one such.”

  “The nursery maid?” Marcus groaned. “I should have known, when the last one cried off. You did that, did you not?”

  D’Argento nodded. “Everything must be secondary to our cause. How do you know you are not harbouring vipers in your home?” He jerked his head, indicating the closed door. “That one could be a viper, sent to defeat you and spirit the babies away. You were so foolish as to not read her, to ensure she was harmless?”

  “Is she?” Marcus said, grim-faced. His jaw stiffened.

  “Yes, as it happens,” his friend said. Very few people perturbed d’Argento, or Mercury, messenger of the gods and their healer when they needed one. Not even Marcus, the embodiment of the god of war. He was also close friends with Jupiter, who was living in the country with his wife, jailers to Jupiter’s father. “She is Rhea’s older sister, in case you were wondering.”

  “I was not.” That was the last thing on his mind. Why should he care how old she was?

  D’Argento finished his drink and leaned back, propping his feet on the edge of the table in a totally reprehensible way. Since he was wearing evening pumps and not boots and spurs, Marcus let him get away with it. “You should take care, brother-in-arms. Those children may not be everything they should be. Sometimes attributes are not immediately apparent.” He shrugged. “I believe they were born for a reason.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t know exactly why they’re here. You seem to know everything else.” Marcus shook his head. D’Argento looked for enemies around every corner. The fact he had been right a time or two did not negate the times he had been wrong.

  “They may be as everyone claimed. Merely babies. They’re six months old, are they not?”

  “Nearly seven,” Marcus said. Damnation, how could he recall that so precisely? He did not care for the children and refused to build a bond with them. So why should he care how old they were?

  Because Ruth arrived when they were six months old, that was why, and she cared for them. Even before he knew her true identity he had seen that. He marked the time not for the babies’ sake, but for hers. He’d had her in this house for a month. In some ways it seemed longer, as if she’d always been here, and in others, no time at all.

  Tonight d’Argento had changed the game. Marcus and Ruth had no more questions to be answered with truth. In the last week or two he had desisted from asking truly meaningful questions, preferring to ask her about her tastes and her experience. She answered, sometimes evasively, but he never caught her out in a lie.

  And he would not read her mind without her permission. Since she did not know who he was, how could he do that? He respected her privacy, marked it as special to her. He would not violate it.

  He went back in his mind to the questions he remembered. Not once had she lied. That must mean something good, surely? Or maybe it was just because a lie was an awfully hard thing to keep hold of in the longer term, unless one was a professional liar, a fraudster. Or a politician.

  Some questions he wanted answers to. They remained, and he would not rest until he asked them. “I need to see her.”

  “Leave her,” d’Argento said. He levelled a direct stare at Marcus, emphasising what he was saying. “She is distressed, not thinking. And, my friend, so are you.”

  Marcus’s immediate reaction was to tell Amidei to go to hell. His urge was to go to her. D’Argento was right. Ruth was a proud woman and she deserved time to try to get her senses in order before he bombarded her with more questions.

  After the first shock, his rationality returned and he could think once again. She had done nothing to endanger the children or to remove them since she’d been here. She’d proved such an excellent companion he was not sure he ever wanted to part with her. Would she agree to stay on in another capacity? To call her a housekeeper would not do her any favours, however, and in the household of a single gentleman, there were few positions a woman could fill and remain respectable in the eyes of her peers. He feared he had probably done her some damage already.

  “If it helps,” d’Argento said quietly, “I did not detect any malice in her. I merely skimmed her mind, but the matter of her identity was troubling her, and it remained foremost. Had you merely touched her with your mind you would have seen it. Every time you call her Miss Carter, the truth springs up to confront her. She must have worried about it recently.” He sipped his brandy. “You must never discount hidden malice. Our enemies are cunning. Someone could have bespelled her.”

  “No.” Marcus shook his head. He was familiar with the miasma affecting a person under an enchantment. He never detected anything of the kind in Ruth. “She thinks clearly, and her reasoning is excellent.”

  “It might be buried deep and waiting to emerge.”

  The dark pronouncement held no fears for Marcus. “If it is, then I will deal with it. I’m not without my own defences.” Had d’Argento forgotten just how powerful he was? Or what he had done to free himself? In the pantheon of Olympian gods, Mars was accounted as next only to Jupiter. While Marcus sometimes took his powers for granted, he never underestimated them, nor did he wish himself rid of them, as some immortals did. He would not succumb, not again.

  Again? He blinked. D’Argento would help him with something else. “The enchantment Virginie and I suffered. Is it gone?”

  D’Argento regarded him steadily. “If you will allow me deep into your mind I will discover if there is anything left.”

  “Of course.” As the healer to the gods Marcus trusted d’Argento implicitly. For other matters he would reserve judgment.

  Accordingly, he dropped his shields, the ones he had developed to protect his attributes. Vulnerability attacked him from all sides, but also an immense sense of freedom. He was open to the world, waiting for attack, like a warrior on the battlefield who dropped his shield and fought with his hands.

  D’Argento entered without fanfare. Warmth and then heat spread through Marcus’s head, then spread to the rest of his body. He waited, expectant, wary of attack. He had no idea how long the examination took, but eventually d’Argento said, “I’m finished.”

  Immediately Marcus crashed his protective mental shields back up. They settled into place with a sound like the slamming of an iron door echoing through his mind. He blinked, and turned his attention to d’Argento.

  “Nothing,” Mercury said. His eyes were gleaming silver, his face and hands almost unnaturall
y smooth, as if they were hard instead of soft skin. An illusion that passed quickly, so the lines in his face, such as they were, reappeared and the brilliants on his waistcoat glittered as his breath deepened. “I saw nothing. The enchantment is gone.”

  Marcus had suspected as much. For the last few nights he had slept better than at any time since his affair with Virginie. However, confirmation was still a relief. “How?” he demanded. He preferred rational reasons for the events that affected him most.

  “Virginie is cured. In her case, love cured her.”

  Marcus waited for pain to pierce him at the thought of his lover finding happiness elsewhere. It didn’t come. Only a lingering sadness their affair was doomed from the start. His reaction shocked him. He had become accustomed to thinking of Virginie with regret and longing. When had the change come?

  “Love?” He shook his head. “Not in my case.” Who could he fall in love with? Ruth? Before he could muffle the sensation, a surge of pleasure soared through him. But that was impossible.

  D’Argento spread his hands and shrugged in a continental gesture. “I am still learning about that affliction. There could be another cause for the cure. Abstinence, for example. I would ask a favour of you, if you would.”

  Marcus raised a brow in query.

  “Let me know the eventual outcome, would you? You have no trace of the enchantment within you I can discern, but I would know what cured you.”

  He could see no harm in that. He nodded. “If I know, then you will.”

  “Thank you.”

  Oh, lord! “I sometimes walk around the house at night. One night I left fiery footprints which burned themselves out, but I also set my bed on fire.” That night, when Ruth saved him and he kissed her. “Would that be when the last of the enchantment left me?”

  D’Argento regarded him with more than a little interest. “You’re the god of war. That means fire. That’s your element.”

  “I thought it was earth.”

  D’Argento shrugged. “It depends which tradition you subscribe to. Let’s assume fire, shall we? Those prints were your body’s last traces of the spell. You were getting rid of them the most efficient way you knew.”