Chapter Two
“What scandals are you exploiting these days?” Angus lined up his cue and squinted at his ball.
Liam sipped his whisky. “As many as I can find.”
His brother grunted and made his shot, scoring a cannon as his ball hit two others. “It’s not like you to keep something from Mother.”
“Mother hears at least as much as I print in the paper.”
Angus cocked his head and made another shot, sending Liam’s ball across the green baize and almost potting it in the corner pocket. Almost, but not quite.
Liam grinned vindictively. He and his brother played cutthroat billiards rules; any foul wiped out all a player’s points in a round. It was a tradition of theirs after Sunday dinner at their mother’s home. At times Liam suspected she’d bought this billiard table strictly to lure them here. Thin-lipped, Angus stepped aside. Liam did not intend to yield the table again. He set down his glass and reached for his cue.
“I can tell you’ve got something.” Angus picked up the piece of lambswool they used to clean the cues. In a competitive fit, Angus had had a cue made to his personal specifications. Liam had mocked him for that, even though he’d secretly had a custom stick made as well, an exact match in appearance for those in his mother’s cabinet, and substituted it for one of the ordinary cues. Since Angus only used his personal cue, and no one else played billiards on Mrs. MacGregor’s table, the replacement had gone unnoticed.
Now Liam hefted his perfectly weighted cue stick and surveyed the table. He did so enjoy ruining his older brother at billiards. “Two guineas a round, was it?”
“One,” said Angus curtly. “Wake me if you ever make a shot.”
“Go ahead and close your eyes,” murmured Liam, calculating the angles and lining up his plan of attack. “Perhaps then you won’t bawl like a child when I trounce you.”
“Who’s the new woman writing for you?” Angus asked just as he made his shot.
Liam swore at him. “That’s cheating.”
“Just idle conversation,” protested his brother with a gleam of false sincerity in his eyes. “Mother’s been dying to know.”
He glared. By some miracle, his shot hadn’t gone too far awry and he’d scored a point. Not the two points he had lined up, but it meant he kept control of the table. “It’s not really her concern, is it?”
While his father had fretted over Liam’s choice of profession, his mother had been entranced; now her son was privy to all the choicest gossip in London. Mrs. MacGregor’s favorite stories were about the Royal family, but anyone with a title was almost as good. The scandalous doings of her betters consumed Mrs. MacGregor’s attention.
Liam knew his mother read Tales of Lady X; he brought her every installment, along with copies of the Intelligencer’s scandal and gossip columns. She adored both, and never stopped trying to guess the identities of both authors. Fortunately Liam was used to fending off his mother.
“No,” said Angus, drawing out the word, “but it’s so intriguing that you won’t tell her, even after she vowed to be bound by secrecy.”
“We both know that would last as long as it took for her to call for the carriage and drive to Mrs. Lachlan’s home.” Liam recognized the questioning as a ploy to distract him again, and consequently said nothing else until he’d made his next shot, and the one after, clearing the table and winning the round.
Grim-faced, Angus slapped a guinea on the green felt. Now they both had to play around it, and whoever racked up the most points in an hour collected all the guineas on the table. At this point, Liam didn’t even remember the proper rules of billiards, but he didn’t care. The times he walked home, pockets heavy with Angus’s guineas, were celebratory occasions.
“You know,” Angus said casually, cleaning his cue and preparing for the next round, “some fellows mutter against you for hiring women.”
“Envious bastards,” was Liam’s languid reply.
“And women who write such scandalous things, too,” Angus went on. “Ladies cavorting with all manner of men!”
Liam gave a bark of laughter. Either Angus had started reading Lady X, or he’d been listening too much to their mother. “As if they would turn down a woman who wanted to seduce them! Men haven’t any high ground to stand on when it comes to seduction.” He poured more whisky for both of them. “You’ll have to trust me on that last bit, of course.”
Angus cursed and took his shot. To Liam’s private disgust, he scored another point. “What the bloody hell does that mean?”
“Merely that I doubt women stroll into the bank and try to seduce you.” Liam spoke soothingly, as if he were gently explaining some gross injustice Angus had no choice but to tolerate. No doubt he did; while Liam had got their mother’s fair skin and wavy dark hair, Angus was nearly identical to their father, ginger-haired, red-faced, and built like a bull.
His brother raised his eyebrows. “And do they stroll into the newspaper offices and offer to raise their skirts for you?”
In spite of himself, a small smile curved Liam’s lips. “On occasion.”
Angus started. “No!”
“Are you ceding the table?”
“No!” Angus lined up a shot, then abandoned the pose. “Not really. You’re having fun with me, eh?”
Liam sipped his drink and said nothing.
Angus threw down his cue. “By God, you bloody liar! You can’t mean it. What woman—? Why? And when the bloody hell—?” He shook his head in disgust. “I’m done.” He turned and stomped toward the door.
“Wait,” said Liam in mock disgust. “Such a poor sport you are, to leave before the game is done.”
His brother stopped in the doorway. “Admit you were lying about women offering to raise their skirts for you.”
“Can’t.”
“Won’t,” scoffed Angus.
Liam raised his glass and cocked his head in admonishment. “Can’t, because it’s true.”
“Who?”
“I’ll tell you who when hell freezes,” Liam shot back. “What sort of gentleman do you take me for?”
For a long moment Angus glared at him. “Is she a fetching lass?”
He sipped his whisky and pondered it. Was Bathsheba fetching? Because she was the only woman who’d ever offered him such a proposition. She wasn’t a beauty in the usual sense, but there was something about her. He knew she could be quiet and unremarkable when she wanted to be, but she had a spine of steel and a mind to match. When she set her sights on something, woe betide the fellow who tried to deny her.
How ironic that she’d set her sights on him. A faint smile curved his mouth at the memory of her blunt request. “She’s not a conventional beauty,” he finally said, “but she’s arresting all the same.”
Reluctantly Angus came back to the table. “Why you?”
Liam bared his teeth in a wide smile. “My devilish charm and irresistible masculinity.”
His brother roared with laughter. “Money! She wants to snare you in the parson’s noose, now that your gossip rag is profitable.”
It was profitable thanks to Bathsheba. Her Tales of Lady X outsold the newspaper. Even he hadn’t predicted that much appeal in them. But the result was that Bathsheba was making as much as he was, since they split the profits evenly. She wrote them, he published them…and he kept her identity an absolute secret. Her own brother didn’t know she was the author, even though Daniel Crawford did business with Liam at times.
So he simply shrugged at his brother’s goading comment. “Perhaps.”
That seemed to appease Angus. He gave a patronizing smile and held out his glass. “Pour us another, would you? I can’t let you walk away with my money.”
An hour later Liam did walk away, eight guineas richer. Angus had made a variety of halfhearted threats and curses, which always buoyed Liam’s mood even more than winning his brother’s money. Angus departed after muttering once more that Liam was a damned liar, claiming women were chasing him. Liam had held
his tongue and made a show of collecting the guineas, going so far as to whistle a jaunty tune as he did so. That, he knew, would bother Angus more than any quarrel ever could.
Still… He didn’t like that Bathsheba was an object of gossip, even if no one knew her name. For a moment he considered reneging on his agreement, but only for a moment. The last thing he wanted to do was let her venture out into London in search of a man to ravish her. He freely admitted it had never occurred to him to seduce her, but now that she’d planted the thought, damned if it hadn’t taken root and pervaded his brain.
And she wanted it to be passionate and wild, to throw her world off kilter and leave her dazzled. What exactly did she expect, he wondered. Liam knew she haunted the public assemblies and pleasure gardens, ostensibly in search of material for her books, but she must have seen quite a bit. The dark groves at Vauxhall had hosted more than their fair share of illicit seduction and hasty coupling.
His mouth curved at the thought. That must be what she anticipated: a frantic bout of thrusting up against a tree, the laughter of other guests audible over the pants and moans of the copulating couple. That was rather how Bathsheba had described the encounter in Hyde Park between her heroine, Lady X, and the notorious rake pursuing her.
So did she picture herself as Lady X, willing and ready for a quick tupping in dangerously public places? Liam thought not. The woman he knew guarded her privacy, and knew how to hold her tongue. She might think she was Lady X, might even want to be Lady X, but he knew better.
All his life Liam had delighted in upsetting people’s view of him. His father had wanted him to be a banker, like his brother, and Liam went into newspapers. His mother wanted him to marry one of her friends’ daughters, and he never managed to stay interested in a woman for more than a few months. His brother expected him to fail, or at least come beg for help, and Liam had chosen to live on bread and ale and sleep in his office when his business struggled. And now Bathsheba probably thought he would throw her on a sofa and take her like an animal, quick and to the point.
Well. Now that he pictured doing it, that might happen—eventually. His blood heated at the mental image of Bathsheba on his sofa, back arched and hair undone as he held her hips and drove into her.
But first, he meant to show her how delicate, how deliberate, and how thoroughly delicious his seduction could be.
Chapter Three
Bathsheba was sitting down, ready to work, when Liam’s message arrived.
Mary, the new maid, brought it in. “Just delivered for you, ma’am,” she said eagerly. “It’s from Mr. MacGregor so I brought it straight up.”
Bathsheba took the note she held out. It was so lovely to have servants again, after the long period of poverty, followed by the clandestine printing operation that dominated the house during production of Fifty Ways to Sin. Mary was a bit too interested in everything, but she was young, and she had accepted without question Bathsheba’s instruction that certain messages—from Liam, mostly—must be delivered without Danny being the wiser. As much as Bathsheba might scoff about not needing her younger brother’s protection, the fact remained that he was the head of their household, and if he discovered what she was doing, he would protest.
And if he could see this particular note, he might well call Liam out, Bathsheba thought as she read it.
I have been consumed by thoughts of our research endeavor, Liam wrote. It would devastate me to leave any of your hopes unsatisfied. My most ardent desire is to plumb the depths of your curiosity and show you the sublime bliss of knowledge.
She pressed her lips together. Cheeky scoundrel. She flipped the page over.
A carriage will call for you this evening at eight o’clock. —LM
Her hand shook slightly as she folded the letter and hid it in her writing desk. Tonight. Somehow she had managed not to think too much about what would happen, or how or when. But tonight…
She stared at her paper, blank and clean and waiting. Normally she looked forward to writing, creating exciting and dramatic obstacles for her heroine to face and overcome. She had framed Lady X’s journey as a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress through the dangers and temptations of England, from a fresh-faced groom out exercising his master’s horse to a handsome lord whiling away a day in a quaint little hamlet while his carriage was repaired to the devilish rakes who stalked London’s pleasure gardens. Lady X wasn’t virtuous enough to resist them, but the object of her quest wasn’t salvation—it was true and honest love. If she encountered divine pleasure along the way, so be it.
And tonight Bathsheba’s goal would be just the opposite: pleasure, with a chance at true love being only a faint, wholly unexpected possibility.
She closed the lid of the desk and went to the window. Of course she didn’t expect Liam to fall in love with her, and she was too old for airy dreams of true love anyway. No doubt he would be efficient and ruthless about it, as he was in everything else. She could just picture him rising from bed and asking if she had any questions.
“It’s only business,” she whispered to herself, staring into the brilliant morning sunshine. Only business, for him and for her. She would be poised and collected, ready to observe and learn and attentive only to the physical pleasures. That was all he’d agreed to provide, and that was all she could expect.
Accordingly, when the clock struck eight that evening, she was waiting in the sitting room. She wore her best gown of brown velvet, and carried a notebook and pencil in her reticule so she could make notes of any and all significant details. Liam might only allot her one or two chances to learn what she needed to know, so she mustn’t squander any of it.
“Where are you going?” her brother asked when he came in.
“The assembly rooms,” she lied.
Danny’s face blanked. “Again? That’s twice this week.”
Bathsheba lifted one shoulder. “I’ve been in the house all day and wanted to get out.”
“Oh.” Looking nonplussed, he went to the side table, where the brandy was. Danny had lost his left arm at the elbow, and even though he managed quite well now, Bathsheba still watched him intently as he opened the bottle and poured a glass of liquor.
“Are you well?” she asked on impulse. Normally he didn’t bat an eye when she went out.
“Of course,” he shot back defensively, raising his glass.
Bathsheba waved one hand. She never offered to help him physically. When he’d come home from war, rail thin and angry at everyone for his lost limb, she had told him he was only disabled if he let himself be. “Not that. You look unhappily surprised.”
He dropped into a chair. “I didn’t know you were going out tonight.”
“You never minded before,” she pointed out.
Danny shrugged and stared into his drink. “I knew why you were going out before. I suppose… Well, I suppose I didn’t realize how much you liked it.” He glanced up at her. “But you do, don’t you?”
She hesitated. Clearly she could not tell him why she was so eager to go tonight. “What else am I to do?” He would know what she meant: no children to teach reading and arithmetic to, no husband to keep her company. Her few friends had both of those, which meant they were occupied most of the time. Most nights now, Bathsheba retired to her room to write or read by the fire with her brother, if he was at home.
Daniel’s gaze shifted away at her reply. “I’m sorry, Bathsheba. It’s not fair to expect you to enjoy being marooned at home with a one-armed brother.”
“It’s only painful when he grows maudlin,” she said tartly. “Most of the time, I don’t feel the suffering too acutely. We’ve got to look after each other, I suppose, since we’ve no one else.”
“This life is too limited, isn’t it?” He faced her again, wary but almost eager. “There’s not much society.”
“No.” She glanced at him sideways. She’d known Danny since he was born, and she could tell from the set of his jaw that he had something on his mind. “It sounds as though yo
u wish to change that.” What did he intend, she wondered with a trace of foreboding. He’d been so revived in spirits since the production of Fifty Ways to Sin. Did he want to restart the newspaper business? Liam could surely tell him that was a fool’s choice; Bathsheba strongly suspected her Tales of Lady X were subsidizing the Intelligencer.
“Well…” He paused. “Perhaps. But not without your approval, of course.”
She frowned. What on earth was he talking about? It wasn’t like Danny to be so coy. But at that moment, a knock sounded on the door, sending Bathsheba’s heart into her throat and scattering her thoughts. She jolted to her feet. “That’ll be my hackney,” she said. “Good night, Danny, don’t wait up!” She pressed a quick kiss on his cheek and hurried out, leaving him staring after her in amazement.
A coachman stood on the step. Bathsheba threw on her cloak and let out her breath, relieved that Liam hadn’t come himself. Not that she had expected him, but it would be like him to confound her expectations, and she would have had a thorny time explaining it to her brother, who had followed her as far as the sitting room doorway.
“Which assembly rooms?” Danny asked, suddenly suspicious.
“The usual ones,” she said as she closed the door on him. “Good night!”
“Miss Crawford?” asked the coachman.
“Yes.” She tugged up the hood of her cloak, even though it was warm out. “Where are we going?”
“I’m not to say.” He opened the door of the waiting carriage for her, and jumped onto the box when she was settled. Bathsheba watched out the window and tried to keep track of where they went, but the carriage left London, driving past the familiar squares and thoroughfares into more rural roads before turning into a winding lane lined with oaks and finally stopping in front of a smart cottage of gray stone.
Liam was standing in the cottage doorway when the driver lowered the step and helped her down. Trying to conceal her sudden uncertainty, Bathsheba thanked the driver and crossed the neat patch of gravel. “Is this your home?”
The Secret of My Seduction (Scandals Book 7) Page 2
