A stroll would not be the thing. Morgan had to keep his eyes peeled for the spy meeting. His mood had soured enough when they’d been isolated in the box for so long, partaking of the cold meats and cheeses that a servant of the Gardens had brought for them. He stuffed his hand into his pocket, fingering that note. Still, if his instincts were right and Phil was the French spy, keeping her occupied would be enough to avert the meeting.
Inclining his head, Morgan offered Mother his arm. “May I escort you?”
“And old woman like me?” She batted her hands through the air, a smirk on her lips. “Of course not. Why don’t you take Miss St. Gobain?”
Morgan fought back a groan. Of course that had been her design. She and Lucy had exchanged mischievous looks every time he spoke to Phil. Keeping the irritation from his face, Morgan turned to do his duty and ask Phil for her arm.
“Where has Miss St. Gobain run off to?” Mother sounded worried.
Morgan bit the inside of his cheek. She’d managed to slip the party without any of them being the wiser. The spy meeting was occurring as they spoke.
11
Jared, you are not going to slip away from me this time. Phil, who had been seated beside Jared when he’d sprung to his feet and left the booth, hurried to stand after him and was the first Lady Graylocke shooed out of the box. As the rest of the party joined her in the open air, she scanned the crowd. Blast! Where had her brother gone? He might have hidden it beneath his aloof, surly demeanor, but he’d been agitated. Phil had tried to minimize that by sitting between him and Miss Vale, though that never seemed to work for long. Lucy wasn’t comfortable, or else her mother needed a change of air, and before Phil knew it, she was pressed hip to hip with Morgan once more.
She didn’t want to think about that distraction. Where had Jared gone? Was he meeting with his lover once more?
He might have lied. Or he might have told the truth. She wouldn’t know until she unearthed the truth.
At the mouth of the Dark Walk, she spotted a lanky figure with his topper askew, as if it had been hastily shoved onto his head. The man turned to glance behind him. It was Jared. It had to be.
A gaggle of young women giggled as they strolled past, accentuating their figures for the pleasure of the esteemed Graylocke brothers. Phil insinuated herself in their midst, using them as camouflage until they decided to double back. She skirted the lit promenades until she reached the infamous Dark Walk. Couples used it for illicit meetings. Debutantes found strolling along its length ruined their reputations. Fortunately, Phil didn’t give a fig’s end for her reputation. She had to know the truth.
While they were ensconced in the box, the twilight had deepened to full night gloom. As she marched away from the lights, the darkness pressed in on her eyes. She fumbled at the bulging reticule on her wrist. Once she found her LEGs, she secured them over her eyes.
This was the pair her father had made, her only working pair. The three-inch-wide, round lenses fitted over her eyes and were held in place by an adjustable strap. Once she buckled it on securely, she adjusted the fittings over the eyes. The lenses themselves might only be three inches wide, but in order to gather the ambient light and amplify it, the contraption jutted out from her head. The LEGs didn’t throw the ground in front of her into full light as if it was day. Rather, they enhanced the grayscale of the gloom enough to pick out details that would have been overlooked by her naked eye.
Although it was called the Dark Walk, the path wasn’t entirely unlit. Cozy alcoves at long intervals between the trees each held a bench and a mostly-shuttered lantern. The faint trickle of light was enhanced by the LEGs as she walked, and she was able to move without fear of tripping.
The walk, although far from deserted, was populated as sparsely as the lanterns. Couples found unoccupied alcoves and ensconced themselves out of sight of the path, shielded by the long, sweeping branches of the trees and the cultivated high hedges. Others leisurely strolled between alcoves with their arms tucked around each other. Phil strode briskly, examining each pair only long enough to determine that none of them were her brother.
At last, she found him entering an alcove. She quickened her step, hoping to get a glance of the occupant within. Was he alone? Was he meeting a lover or someone more nefarious? As she strolled past, the interior became clear. A woman, seated on a bench wearing a low-cut gown, gestured to him.
Lud, her brother had been telling the truth. Cheeks aflame, Phil turned her face away. She strode back the way she’d come, battling the urge to break into a run. Jared was an adult. He had every right to engage in romance even if she, as a rule, did not. She had her inventions, a passion that Jared didn’t share.
Not that she was dispassionate about romance. She’d harbored more than one infatuation, before her parents had died. After that, it had been more and more obvious that she didn’t have time to indulge in courtships. Nor did she have the liberty. A man might try to curtail the hours she spent inventing, never mind that it brought in a great deal of money. Surely a husband would make her excursions to the Society for the Advancement of Science meetings as "Phil" a bit inconvenient. She’d fought tooth and nail to win the respect of those at the Society for the Advancement of Science. If she married, she might lose that and become bereft of a space where she was comfortable enough to join in the enthusiasm for technology.
She was better off on her own. If she wanted someone to hang off her sleeve and beg for kisses…well, she had Pickle for that.
Not that bussing the beak of a parrot in any way compared to a man’s masterful kiss. Not, for example, the Duke of Tenwick’s. Maybe it was the darkened walk, shrouded in silence and intimacy that even the LEGs couldn’t banish, but tingles plagued her at the memory of his kiss. A kiss that would have been infinitely more pleasurable if conducted in the privacy of a bedroom. Or, even, one of these private bowers.
She tilted her head down to avoid the gaze of a strolling party as she retraced her steps toward the entrance to the darkened walk. With luck, the Graylockes wouldn’t have noticed her absence—or perhaps she could explain it away by her intention to follow her brother. Although the ladies’ constant efforts to move her closer to Morgan were both transparent and galling, she could use the distraction from what her brother must be doing at that that moment.
Out here, in the middle of a public walk? No, he couldn’t go farther than a kiss. Not that she cared to contemplate that, either.
Her heartbeat stuttered as a tall, broad-shouldered figure separated from the gloom in front of her. She would recognize that gait and manly form anywhere. Morgan. How had he known to follow her here? He’d been speaking with his mother when she’d slipped away, too busy even to notice the abundance of debutantes hoping to catch his eye.
She stumbled. Her toe scuffed against the gravel. He can’t see you, she assured herself. He couldn’t possibly, with the shadows decorating the path. If anything, he would see the form of a young lady, in much less detail than she could see him, thanks to the LEGs. Even so, she didn’t want to test that theory should they cross paths. The darkness invited her to succumb to pleasures that were best left to dreams. Especially if a marriage proposal was forthcoming every time Morgan indulged. She had to find a means of escape.
There! The opening between two tall hedges, just wide enough to slip through. She prayed that no one occupied the alcove within, or she was about to interrupt a very private moment. Holding her breath, she slipped between the greenery.
It was empty. The bower stretched no more than four feet wide, ringed by the hedges that soared above her head, trees, and bushes. The middle of the hovel was carpeted in short, tended grass. The bench, its legs made of wrought iron to match the lamp post next to it, beckoned. She sat on the hard, cool surface before her legs gave way. Only a sliver of glass was shown through the shuttered lantern, but the light spilling out was enough for her to spot the individual contours of the leaves on the trees. She pressed her hand onto her chest, over her rapidly
thumping heart.
Morgan didn’t have LEGs of his own. He couldn’t possibly have seen her enter the alcove.
He had. His broad shoulders blocked out the only exit as he shifted sideways to enter the bower. He held his topper in his hand, his hair windswept across his forehead, the white streak at his temple a marked contrast from the rest of his inky black hair, melding with the darkness. His buckskin breeches clung to his muscular thighs and his boots hugged calves that had no need for padding to give them shape. The buttons on his jacket gaped, the halves spreading wide to billow around his waist.
The lantern in here didn’t even emit as much light as those in the occupied alcoves she had passed. If she was lucky, maybe he didn’t recognize her and she could pretend to be someone else. She rose to her feet. The moment he vacated the exit, she would slip past and hurry back before someone found them alone.
He took a step closer, the strong pine scent of his cologne washing over her, mingled with the starch on his jacket. Heat radiated from his broad, muscular body. He crowded closer to the bench, leaving her no quarter. She was trapped.
Tilting his face down, he ran his tongue along his lower lip. She was entranced by the movement and couldn’t help but mimic it. The slow slide of her tongue was torture. The ache in her belly bloomed. She forgot entirely about leaving.
Until he spoke her name. “Philomena. Fancy meeting you here, all alone.”
Judging by his tone of voice, he had no intention of letting her leave.
* * *
Morgan had imagined finding himself alone with Phil too often. With the tall hedges shutting them off from the rest of the world and the darkness providing an even deeper intimacy, he battled the urge to re-enact their kiss in the alley. This time, in a more romantic location, maybe he wouldn’t have to cut it short.
You were almost slapped the last time, he reminded himself. In fact, he’d been laughed at.
But she’d also said that she liked it. So had he. Too much. If he gathered her close, would she resist?
He admired her silhouette, the only thing he could see in the dim light. The flare of her hips curved up to her generous breasts. He remembered how soft they’d felt against him. The graceful column of her throat was interrupted by one of the locks of her hair that had fallen free of her coif. And her face… What was wrong with her face? The silhouette was…bizarre.
“What do you have on your face?”
“Oh,” she exclaimed. “I forgot to take off my legs!”
“I beg your pardon?” He swept his gaze down her figure once more to the legs concealed beneath her dress. When he’d run his hand along her thigh in the alley, those legs had felt real and very feminine.
She pulled a strange contraption away from her face. “My legs,” she said by way of an explanation. “Light-enhancing goggles.”
Ever since he’d learned that she was the same Phil who had attended the Society for the Advancement of Science meeting, he had known in the back of his mind that she was an inventor. But for some reason, he hadn’t stopped to consider the kinds of inventions she might create. In fact, it had crossed his mind that her attendance at the meeting had been a cover. It seemed that was not the case.
When she offered the goggles to him, he gingerly accepted them. They weighed more than they appeared. What unwieldly things! He lifted one to his face to peer through the lens. The hovel suddenly veered into focus. The silhouettes of the hedges, benches, and tree came into miraculous focus in comparison to only a moment past. When he looked at Phil, he could make out the distinction between her upper chest and the lacy line of her bodice.
He lowered the goggles reluctantly and offered them back. “Masterful.”
She stood straighter. A warmth entered her voice as she admitted, “My father made them. I’ve been trying to replicate them ever since he died.”
“My condolences. My father died, too.” Morgan rubbed at the streak in his hair. What a buffoon he must seem. “Of course he died, or else I wouldn’t be Duke.”
She laid her hand on his sleeve. Her soft touch ignited his desire. He wanted to pin her hand beneath his. Somehow, he resisted.
“Were you terribly young?”
“Twenty,” he admitted. Little more than a boy who’d fancied himself a man. He’d learned altogether too quickly a man’s responsibilities when he’d been forced to grow up overnight.
“I was twenty-one.” Her voice was low. He had to strain his ears to hear. Her hand shifted on his sleeve, but she didn’t pull it away. “Old enough, at least, to become Jared’s regent until he comes of age in a couple years.”
Morgan’s mother had been his regent for a year, but it had been his stewards that had helped ease the transition the most. His father had been smart enough to surround himself with capable men.
He found and squeezed Phil’s hand. He wished for the goggles back, so he could read her expression. “That must have been terribly hard. I had my brothers and sister to think of, but at least I’ve had Mother all this time to help.”
“I do miss Maman. Papa the most, though. We used to spend so much time together, in the invention room.” Her voice sounded sad.
Tentatively, he eased closer. He slid his arm around her shoulders and offered her what comfort he could. He expected her to push him away, but to his surprise, she leaned into him, pillowing her cheek on his chest. The goggles jabbed at his stomach between them, but he ignored the irritation. He didn’t want to shatter this peaceful moment.
Even though he must. He’d found her alone, but she had to be waiting for someone. Could he convince her to tell him who?
“Are you going to tell me why you snuck away?” His body tensed, bracing for a lie. He forced himself to relax.
Her gusty sigh teased him through his waistcoat and shirt. Gooseflesh raised over his arms and the back of his neck.
“I followed Jared.”
Liar.
“And yet I found you alone.” He tried to keep his voice soft, but steel edged it. He wanted to shred every lie between them. At least with the truth out in the open, they could deal with it and move on.
What are you thinking? He clenched his jaw. It wasn’t as though they had a future, however good she felt in his arms. Desire was intoxicating, but it didn’t negate the fact that they were enemies. This truce wouldn’t last.
She said, “He’s with a…mistress.” She spat out the last word as if it was poisonous.
If that were true, it would be bad form for a young man to flaunt such a thing in the middle of a family outing. “He should be more discreet.”
She tipped her face up to his. If he only lowered his head, he could kiss her. “Like you and me?”
Blast, but she was right! They’d been away from the gathering long enough to draw attention. His mother and Lucy would leap on this like wolves going for the kill.
“You’re right. We should get back.”
Hesitantly, she pulled away from him. She fiddled with the goggles, folding them up until they were small enough to fit inside the reticule hanging from her wrist. His gentlemanly instincts bleated for him to move away and offer his arm. He didn’t want to put that distance between them. There was too much already.
“You know…” Her voice was light, her face turned away from him. “That glass you have. It’s what I need in order to finish my prototype of the goggles.”
Curious, he fished out the oddly-shaped lump of glass he carried with him everywhere. He held it between his fingers. “You mean this?”
“Yes.” Her voice went gravelly.
When she made a grab for the item, he held it high, out of her reach. The stretch of her arm brought her closer to him again, her breasts brushing the bottom of his ribcage.
His voice was every bit as hoarse when he said, “If you want it back, it will come at a price.”
She stepped closer. Her hips brushed against him. Space between them was only an illusion. His head spun. He nearly grabbed her and lowered her onto the soft bed of gr
ass, lest he fall down.
“Fine.” Her voice was hard. “I’ll kiss you.”
His mouth dropped open. He battled with the urge to lower his head and claim her lips then and there. She’d given him permission this time.
Instead, he held himself in check. “I beg your pardon?”
She cocked one hand on her hip. “It’s what men want, isn’t it?”
Zeus, yes. But not like this. Not with this…complication between them.
He squared his shoulders. It helped that he couldn’t see the saucy curve of her lips.
Oh, but he could imagine it. In great detail.
He coughed into his fist to clear his throat. He took care to keep the other hand aloft, the prize out of her reach.
“Actually, what I want right now is the name of the man who gave this to you.”
“Oh.”
Did she sound disappointed? His heart leaped.
“Why?”
He kept his voice even. “Because it’s important to me.”
“I highly doubt that.” He could hear the roll of her eyes in her sarcastic voice.
His arm was starting to ache. He gritted his teeth, refusing to show weakness by sticking the glass back into his pocket. “Unless you’ve developed an invention that can read minds, you’re going to have to take my word for it.”
She leaned closer. Her floral perfume wrapped around him. Where did she like to apply it? Beneath her ears, the hollow of her throat, her delicate wrists? Did she dab some between her thighs? He ached to find out. He breathed through his mouth, shallowly.
“I think you’re lying to yourself,” she whispered, standing on her tiptoes. Even then, her mouth rose no higher than his collarbone. But if he leaned down…
She added, “What man wouldn’t consider a kiss fair trade?” Her voice was low, husky. It did devious things to his body.
“The name of your contact, or I won’t give it back.” His voice was rough. He battled with himself. This wasn’t only his own pleasure he toyed with—he also had the fate of a nation resting on his shoulders. He had to stay strong.
Deceiving The Duke (Scandals and Spies Book 2) Page 10
