Trousers. That explained the fortune she’d spent at an establishment owned by a Madame Blanc. Wild parties. And that absolutely explained the thousands of pounds in expenditures he’d noticed disappearing from his accounts. He read on. Scandal. Artists and playwrights. The Earl of Bolton.
Trousers. Goddamn it. The Earl of bloody Bolton?
The image of Bolton touching Daisy—of taking her in his arms and kissing her soft pink lips, of hearing her satisfied sighs and stripping away her layers and losing himself in her delectable body—made him want to smash his fist through the table. Through a wall. Through the Earl of Bolton’s fucking face.
What had she said that first night at the Beresford ball?
Thank you for your unnecessary concern, Your Grace, but foxes don’t frighten me. They never have.
The devil. If she had allowed Bolton to touch so much as her hand, he’d… What would he do? Hadn’t he left her behind without a word? He’d been gone nearly three months, a far longer span of time than the fortnight he’d known her. His fault. He had pushed her away. He had chosen duty over her.
But if the contents of the report were to be believed, she was faithless. A soul-crushing ire seared through him at the thought. She could have waited for him to return. By God, she’d claimed to love him. Lies, whispered a voice inside his mind. She lied to you. What other lies did she tell?
He tamped down the bile. Forced himself to calm. Took a breath. Two.
There. He felt nothing. Thank Christ Carlisle had chosen to deliver this report in private while Griffin was out reconnoitering with some men from the Home Office. And then, he felt something again. Sudden and explosive, directly in the vicinity of his chest.
“The Earl of Bolton? Tell me, Carlisle. Is she fucking the Earl of Bolton?” He hadn’t meant to snarl out those particular questions to the brick wall of a man staring him down. But they’d emerged, raw and visceral, from somewhere deep within him.
“Likely bewitched Bolton the same way she’s bewitched you,” Carlisle said, his tone sour. “Does she have a magical cunny?”
Sebastian clenched his fists. He would not strike the leader of the League. He would not. “Go to hell.”
Carlisle raised a brow. “Perhaps we ought to ask Bolton.”
Sebastian launched himself from his chair so forcefully that it toppled over behind him. He was going to beat Carlisle to a pulp. “Fuck you, Carlisle.”
“I once thought you unshakeable.” Carlisle whistled, cocking his head to consider him as though viewing him for the first time. “The man who survived a fire and an assassin’s blade brought low by a conniving bit of American skirts. But do read on, Trent. It would appear there’s someone else who may have enjoyed her ample charms as well.”
Damn Carlisle. He was like a lion pawing at a mouse, and Sebastian couldn’t shake the feeling that part of the man enjoyed this. Enjoyed tormenting him. His body teemed with fury and the need to smash something or someone. Belatedly, his training returned to him. He forced the tight muscles of his body to relax, his face to become expressionless. If Carlisle meant to provoke him into doing something stupid, he wouldn’t facilitate the bastard.
Sebastian caught the report back up and hurriedly scoured the contents, returning to the last three paragraphs he’d missed. The blood turned to ice in his veins.
Padraig McGuire called upon Her Grace and was received upon four separate occasions, the first lasting one quarter of an hour, the next lasting twenty minutes, one-half hour the third…
The remainder of the report swirled before his eyes. She had been closeting herself with her former betrothed. A dangerous man, and one that perhaps she had never stopped loving. Betrayal, sharp and sudden as any blade, twisted through him.
He was going to kill McGuire.
When the time came, he would savage him and take great pleasure in it. A knife to the gut, maybe, after water torture. But Daisy… What the hell would he do with his beautiful vixen of a wife if the report was true? Bolton and McGuire? Trousers and scandal? It sounded much like the Daisy Vanreid he’d first met.
Perhaps that was the real Daisy. Mayhap everything had been a lie, from her father’s abuse to her fear. Had that sickening scene with Vanreid the day after their wedding been staged for his benefit?
Dear God, his wife was courting ruin and taking lovers. The last few months he’d spent away from her, he’d been a man torn between his duty and the woman he’d married. How many nights had his thoughts strayed to her? How many times had he longed for her scent, the sight of her burnished curls, her mouth and body ripe beneath his? How desperately had he ached for the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand? How thoroughly had his love for her eaten him alive?
And all the while, she’d been scheming and taking other men to bed. In his own bloody home. Was it possible that the entire time he’d thought he was using her, she had in fact been using him? The notion was too ugly to contemplate, the implications too far-reaching and severe.
His stupid, bloody heart thudded in his chest. Had everything been a ruse? If it had, he needed to be put down like a lame horse. How could his instincts about her have been so wrong? How could he love someone capable of such deception, he who had been trained better than anyone to recognize even the most cunning subterfuge?
“Trent?” Carlisle’s voice—tinged with something he’d swear was concern if he didn’t know better—pierced the fog of wrath that had infected his mind.
“What would you have me do?” he rasped.
Carlisle’s chiseled face hardened even further. “You’ll need to return to London at once. Griffin will accompany you when he returns. According to all the intelligence the Home Office has been able to gather, signs indicate quite strongly that she’s been tasked with infiltrating the Special League. It would appear that you are her target.”
Her target.
The two words echoed in his mind, a taunt. It all made perfect, disgusting sense. A beautiful heiress who’d set the ton on its ear. She’d danced her way through a series of suitors and balls, setting off wagging tongues but avoiding ruination. Daisy was the siren meant to lure his ship into the jagged rocks. She’d put on a pretty show of fearing her father. And he’d been sympathetic. His honor had demanded he protect her, even in the face of all logic, reason, and yes, duty.
He was no one’s target, damn it. He was one of the finest spies in all of England. There was no way in hell he would allow himself to be outfoxed by a sultry siren who smelled of bergamot and made him hard simply by being in the room.
He straightened, forcing himself to focus. “I return to London and then what? Wait for those bastards to set off another bomb?”
A strange expression crossed his superior’s face. “No. You need to keep a watchful eye on your wife. Find out how much she knows. Discover her connections. Gather as much information for us as you possibly can so that we can send more double operatives to infiltrate their ranks. And do whatever you must to break her and gain the information we need.”
To break her.
The notion shouldn’t fill him with… what, sadness? He couldn’t define the sensation hollowing him out. Didn’t want to. “As you order, Your Grace.” Suddenly, he needed to escape. He felt as if the air had been sucked from the chamber and he couldn’t properly breathe. “I will take my leave and begin preparations for my return posthaste.”
He pivoted on his heel, ready to flee. Trying not to run from the room. From the demons. From the price of doing what he must. From the burden of duty.
“Trent?”
Sebastian halted, turning back to his superior.
Carlisle had the appearance of a man at his mother’s funeral. A foreign sensation crept through Sebastian, filling him with dread. He knew what the duke was going to say before the words ever left his mouth. His entire body tightened, bracing for it.
“Prepare yourself, Trent,” Carlisle said finally. “She is a woman, I know, but under the proper circumstances, a bolder course of acti
on may have its merits, if you take my meaning.”
He was sure he did, but he wanted to be certain. “You want me to… kill her?”
Asking the question filled him with ice. Dread expanded in his chest. Disgust curdled his gut.
His superior inclined his head, his gaze steady. “I want you to take whatever action you deem necessary as you carry out your duty to the Crown and the innocents under our protection.”
Jesus. Sebastian’s mouth went dry. The Duke of Carlisle wanted him to murder Daisy. He was giving him permission. An indirect order. Even if she was guilty of every crime Carlisle suspected her of and more, women and children were… damn it, they were women and children. Men could be gutted, shot, hanged, or drowned. Burnt alive. Any number of torturous ends could be their fate in the name of duty. But not women.
Not Daisy.
Not his wife, regardless of how duplicitous and conniving she may be.
He’d sworn an oath to the League, to his Crown, yes. But he’d also sworn an oath before God. An oath to her. And even if she was the most deceptive viper in all of England, he still loved her. Bloody hell.
Without another word, he stalked away. He made it out the door before he cast up his accounts into the mud and dung-caked street.
aisy returned from yet another evening’s entertainment. It was well after midnight, and she was weary, as much from the lateness of the hour and the strain of the charade she maintained as from her delicate condition.
All night long, she had feigned smiles and flirted madly. Danced with as many rakes and scoundrels as she could find. She’d laughed, pretended to be a merry wife who hadn’t a care in the world that she’d been left behind.
Pretended that she hadn’t been left to gather dust in a Belgravia townhouse as if she were of no greater import than the landscapes and former dukes once lining the walls. That she didn’t mind if she had no inkling of her husband’s whereabouts and nowhere to send a proper letter aside from barraging his estates. That she’d received not one godforsaken word from him.
It was as if he’d vanished as surely as Bridget had.
Once ensconced in the solitude of her bedchamber, she plucked the earrings from her ears and slipped off her dress shoes. They were aquamarine satin, fetching creations that matched her ensemble perfectly, but hours of clipping about in heels had left her feet aching.
Closing her eyes and releasing a sigh, she rolled her head about her shoulders, seeking to loosen her tense muscles. She had instructed Abigail not to wait up for her, and Hugo was already asleep in the comfortable bed he preferred in the lower salon. She was alone. The silence after such a raucous evening was enjoyable.
With a sigh, she hugged the gentle, almost imperceptible swell of her belly where a child grew. It had taken Georgiana’s perceptive observations regarding her wan appearance and frequent bouts of nausea for her to realize she was carrying Sebastian’s babe. The notion had initially filled her with hope that he might, at last, return to her. But more days had passed, more letters unanswered, more silence, more waiting, and she had begun to settle into the grim acceptance that her husband didn’t give a damn about her.
Not to worry, little one, she promised the babe now with a pang in her heart. I will love you enough for the both of us.
“Where were you tonight, wife?”
The voice, deep and dark and silky with menace, cut into the quiet calm.
An undignified squeak tore from her as she started, eyes flying open. Sebastian stood before her, as if conjured from her troubled thoughts. Wickedly handsome, tall, dark, debonair. Expression as solid as granite, jaw rigid. Blue eyes glittering.
At long last, her husband had returned.
All the air fled her lungs, as if she’d taken a fall from a horse at full gallop. Her heart pounded, the anger and resentment swirling inside her warring against a fragile burst of hope that he was back. Had her letter reached him, then? She drank him in before she could remind herself that he had left her with nary a word or expectation of finding him for nearly three solid months.
“How ironic you should pose such a question,” she told him tartly when she found her voice at last. “For I’ve been wondering the same of you, husband. Where were you these last months?”
But he didn’t answer. Instead, he remained forbidding and still, raking her with an insolent gaze. Heat suffused her body. A pang of intense longing began low in her belly and radiated outward before she could ruthlessly tamp it down.
How foolish she was, flesh and heart both betraying her. For she’d missed the husband she’d only begun to know. She’d missed his teasing, his rare smiles, his sensual touch, the way he kissed. Her fragile heart had begun to believe she’d found a future that would not only be preferable to her fate as Viscountess Breckly, but one in which she could find happiness. She couldn’t ignore just how bereft his absence had left her.
And now that he was here, within reach, it was as if a missing part of her had been restored.
He was every bit as beautiful as she remembered. More so, in fact. But there was something different about him. Something in the way he held himself so stiffly, in the way he stared at her, his finely formed lip curling into a sneer.
All at once, she knew what that something was. Felt it like a blow that banished her naiveté and her interminable weakness for him both. This was no happy homecoming.
He was furious.
Her earrings, heavy diamonds and hard gold warmed by her skin, bit into her palm. “Sebastian,” she said, irritated by the breathless quality of her voice. “Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
He cocked his head, glowering. “Were you expecting someone else, then?”
Daisy frowned. “Someone else?”
“Someone else.” He stepped closer to her. He was so near that his scent, clear and masculine and delicious, washed over her. “Someone like the Earl of Bolton, perhaps? Or any one of your other lovers?”
Ah. The gossip had finally reached him wherever he’d been secreting himself. She knew a brief moment of satisfaction that her endless devotion to flushing him out had succeeded. But the pleasure was hollow, for he had returned a wrathful stranger. And she was angry at him as well. She wanted answers. Wanted to rail against him, demand to know why he’d left her in such haste, nothing but a vague missive to explain. To know the secrets that had taken him from her.
“Well?” he snapped, his voice as sharp as a rapier. “Still holding your tongue, darling? Don’t you know that this is the part of our little tragedy where you attempt to explain why you’ve been welcoming other men into your bed?”
She flinched, steeling herself. “What have you heard?”
“That you’ve been making a cuckold of me.” He took another step closer, stalking her like she was his prey.
Daisy resisted the frantic urge to retreat. He wouldn’t strike her. His vitriol was almost palpable. Fear crept its way into her heart as she recalled all the times her father had charged at her. The times he had hit her. The occasion when he’d struck her with so much force that she’d fallen to the floor and his boot-shod foot had connected with her midriff. Her sin? Embarrassing him at dinner by laughing too loudly. She still remembered the sensation of all the air being knocked from her body in a rush, the burning in her lungs.
But she held her ground now against Sebastian’s anger, because she was not the girl she’d once been. She was a woman now. Independent and strong. Her chin tipped up in defiance. “I’ve been doing nothing of the sort.”
Two more strides and his long legs brushed the twin falls of her specially tailored trousers. Trousers that would soon no longer fit her with their snug embrace of her blossoming figure. He made a show of raking her with a glance that swept down over her form and left her feeling as though she was bare before him rather than fully dressed. “What in the hell are you wearing?”
“You have functioning eyes,” she pointed out with a flippant air she little felt. “What does it look like I’m wearing?”
>
Her evening wear ensemble was, she knew, unusual. As part of their campaign to stir up enough scandal to bring their husbands back to them, she and Georgiana sought the aid and creative genius of the talented Madame Blanc, who had been delighted to create beautiful and costly wardrobes featuring cleverly designed trousers and skirted bodices. Daisy adored them, and rather imagined she would wear them even though her original purpose for them—starting enough tongues wagging to bring her husband home—was done.
“It looks as if you’re wearing the costume of a whore.” His voice was pure ice. “What can you be thinking, gadding about London wearing bloody trousers? Wasn’t it enough to take your pleasure with whatever man you could find? You needed to humiliate me as well, is that it?”
His words cut her more than she had expected them to. When she and Georgiana had set their plan into motion, she hadn’t considered the full ramifications. She’d been driven by desperation, by longing. By missing him. She’d been prepared to do anything—don trousers, flirt with rakes, incite whispers and disapproval at every turn. Heavens, she had written him a waterfall of letters, desperate for any way to make him come back to her.
But scandal was rather like wildfire. It couldn’t be controlled. Once it had begun burning, its hunger for destruction became voracious. Now, it seemed all her frustrated efforts had turned upon her to disastrous effect.
He was home at last, but he didn’t believe her. He believed the gossip. And well, why should he not? They were strangers, weren’t they? Married for several months, only a fortnight spent in each other’s presence. What could she have expected? Her heart felt like a weight in her chest to match the knot of dread spinning in her stomach.
Yet, it was he who had created the chasm. He who had abandoned her with a hastily scrawled missive as explanation. The loneliness, isolation, and confusion of the months without him struck her now with the force of a locomotive. An ire to match his fanned into a flame. Where had he been? What had he been doing? Who was the real Sebastian, Duke of Trent?
Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands Book 3) Page 24
