It still turned Channing’s stomach to think of the faded brand pressed so cruelly into her skin, to think of the humiliation of being chained to her bed without basic comforts until she capitulated. Those were the only episodes she’d mentioned and only because he’d discovered the one and pushed for the other. Left to her own, she would not have told him.
She doesn’t trust you, came the answer. And why should she? He’d told her he’d wished she’d come to him from the first, but that was hindsight speaking. When she had come to him for help re-integrating into English society, he’d been all business. Perhaps she had been looking for something more? He’d not understood at the time that her request to hire an escort had been a plea to start over.
He’d done his job, even indulged in physical intimacy with her at last. But he’d made sure he’d remained emotionally aloof and that she knew it. She was just another appointment in a ledger full of them. He’d even gone so far as to flirt with another, Catherine Emerson, the neighbour’s daughter who’d gone on to marry his brother.
He’d kept his ‘interest’ in Alina purely professional and she hated him for it. He’d played a game of revenge just as he’d perceived she’d played one with him those years ago in Paris. But what he knew now called all that into question. Had she scorned him that day in the park or had she protected him? Even in the early days of her marriage, had she already been in danger from the comte’s cruel gambits? These were the details, the difficulties he’d alluded to today in Hyde Park, the things that must be discussed.
Alina felt knowing the details of her past couldn’t change anything, but Channing disagreed. It had the power to change everything, to call into question all he’d assumed to be true. He hadn’t known about the darkness of that marriage—could he assume the comte didn’t know about him? If he did know, had he made Alina pay?
Channing felt his gut clench again, as his mind replayed the pivotal scene in the park. Had he really seen a young devoted wife, clinging affectionately to her husband after a long absence? Had her husband draped her in jewels benevolently, or had there been a more malicious intent behind them? More importantly, what did those answers mean to him? He could not turn back the clock for her or for him. Was he in over his head? He could handle Roland Seymour, but where Alina and his emotions were concerned, maybe Amery was right. It was good to know, come what may, that his friends stood at the ready. All he had to do was say the word.
* * *
There was one word for the Comtesse de Charentes and that word was bitch. Roland Seymour swore it liberally and loudly, his hand coming down hard on the table surface where a few members of the syndicate had gathered for this meeting. He was calling it impromptu; the others were calling it an emergency. The comtesse had attempted to deceive him and she’d made him look the fool in front of Sefton and Eagleton, who would not hesitate to let the rest of the syndicate know what had occurred.
‘This is why we must be cautious. Our system works. We have to be the ones who go to the clients, not the other way around. If clients are not carefully vetted, this is what happens,’ Sefton preached.
Seymour wanted to shove all his caution up the man’s ass except that, in this case, Sefton was justified. Charlie the surveyor had returned home late last night with the news: there was no land. The deed was just paper, it represented nothing. Charlie had checked the local records, talked with local people. No one had ever heard of such a place.
‘It’s not the duping that bothers me. It’s the motives behind it which are clearly deliberate,’ Eagleton put in. ‘Our comtesse knew what she was doing. This was absolutely premeditated.’ He smirked. ‘She led you about the nose quite exquisitely from the flirtation to the walk about the room, right up to imparting the deed, which she happened to have with her at a house party.’ He snorted there. ‘That should have been the biggest red flag of all.’
Seymour tried to ignore the comment and he should have known better. He’d been overconfident. It had always been so easy, up to this point, to swindle the women. They were more desperate than men, they just wanted someone to come in and take care of everything for them and the comtesse had played the role to the hilt. Men, however, needed to feel this was business, that they were partners in this new and exciting venture that would revolutionise their finances.
Eagleton pushed a file folder at him. ‘This explains it pretty neatly. Have a look.’
Seymour opened the brief and read, listening begrudgingly to Eagleton’s commentary. ‘You may recall the family name from a few years ago.’
Marliss. Sir Dylan Marliss. Seymour did remember him, vaguely; a gentry farmer with a comfortable income, but a property that was vastly under-developed and he knew it. Marliss had known he could be doing better, but he hadn’t the ability or the financial connections to make it happen. Marliss and his wife were polite, quiet people with a younger daughter, just the sort the syndicate liked to do business with. They would neither suspect trouble nor make trouble once they discovered the syndicate’s duplicity.
Seymour shoved the dossier back across the table. The comtesse was none other than Alina Marliss, their older daughter of whom there’d been not a single mention. Had the syndicate known there was a French countess in the family, they would not have approached Marliss. The syndicate made it a practice not to do business with peers. Peers were too well connected, too protected and they usually had a network of friends in high places. The syndicate preferred country men like Marliss. The country was isolating. Nothing happened quickly and that suited the syndicate perfectly.
‘In my defence, Alina Marliss was never mentioned once in any of our conversations.’ Seymour was desperate to save his image. He was starting to look like a fool in front of these men.
‘The reason might be this.’ Eagleton pushed another file across the table. Good lord, how many files did Eagleton have? He talked while Seymour scanned. ‘At the time we were doing business with Marliss, the comtesse’s husband had recently passed away under a cloud of suspicion. It stands to reason that the family was trying to distance itself from any ensuing scandal. There was already some tension between the Marlisses and their daughter, but I’ll get to that in a moment.’
Seymour looked up from the documents. ‘It says here the cause of death was likely poisoning.’
‘A long and gradual poisoning,’ Eagleton added. ‘Which means one needs to have regular and consistent access to the intended victim.’
‘Are you suggesting the comtesse was suspected of such an act?’ Seymour’s mind began to move from defence to offence.
‘She was, as were several others. It seems the comte was a man who was either intensely liked or disliked by his peers.’
This is where it got tricky. ‘Did anything come of the suspicions?’ Seymour asked, sliding the papers back into the folder.
‘Nothing but rumour. It was never determined who might have done the comte in. The list remains long and distinguished to this day. It could have been anyone from the comtesse to his valet and several other nobles in between.’
That was disappointing, Seymour thought. ‘I’ve already heard the rumours and they’re fairly vague.’ At the house party, he’d heard only that her husband’s death had been quite unlooked for and, as such, it had struck people as unnatural. But there’d been no mention of poison or of suspects, only that it was suspicious in nature. ‘If there are multiple suspects, that only seems to weaken the power of that rumour to do the comtesse any damage.’
Eagleton’s eyes began to gleam. ‘There is a bit more to it. You do recall that there was some pre-existing tension between the comtesse and her English family. It seems she wanted a divorce and her family disapproved of her pursuing one.’
That got Seymour’s attention. There was something about divorce in France he was trying to remember. ‘Isn’t divorce illegal over there?’ He didn’t know exactly, it seemed to change
with the wind. Under Napoleon, divorce had been legalised, but under the restored monarchy, the king had retracted the right to divorce. Seymour wasn’t sure if that was still the case or if there might be exceptions.
‘Oh, it’s still illegal, all right, if you’re French,’ Eagleton said, ‘but she’s English. She was hoping to trade on her English heritage and get the divorce passed through Parliament. She hoped her parents might support it and help see the deed done, but her parents were scandalised. They wanted nothing to do with it. It would have been a long shot even if the comte had been game for it. But he was French and he would have none of it.’
It was all coming together now. Seymour nodded his head. ‘With no option for divorce, our comtesse is left with only one way out.’
‘Thus the suspicions. She asked for a divorce just three months before he died. The rumours have never been clarified—we could stir the pot a bit, rekindle some interest, give the rumours some teeth, some details, doesn’t matter if they’re true.’
Seymour gave a malevolent grin. It would be the perfect pay back for trying to draw him out. ‘It would certainly be leverage, something that could be held against her to stop her from exposing us.’
Eagleton nodded. ‘The best part is, we don’t even have to have any real proof, we simply have to have her believe the rumours won’t be so harmless as they were the last time. If she had real fear that she could be brought up on charges for murder, she would think twice about pushing her suit with us.’
‘She should be thinking twice already. Don’t forget—’ Sefton spoke up for the first time in a while. He’d been quietly listening and thinking ‘—there’s still the current issue of fraud. She deliberately put forward a false deed in an attempt to take money from us. Think how that will look to a court of law. If we coupled that with the suspicions about her husband’s death, her character would look black indeed.’
Seymour liked where this was going. There was a certain irony in a fraudulent agency being able to legitimately prosecute someone else for fraud. But Eagleton was quick to ruin his mental celebration.
‘Before we get overly confident in our position, I think we have to ask ourselves why? Why would the comtesse take such a risk? Is she that impulsive, or is she that sure of herself? If the latter is true, who does she have backing her? Protecting her?’ Eagleton fixed him with a searching stare. ‘Who are her friends?’
‘No one. I’m sure of it. Women are too intimidated by her and men, well, men just want to bed her.’ Seymour sounded more confident than he was. He wasn’t sure at all that it was true. Images of the summerhouse came to mind, but he wouldn’t tell the syndicate about Deveril yet, not when there was no clear need. In the meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt to keep a watch of his own. Maybe there was a way to neutralise Channing Deveril before he became too attached to the comtesse or too involved.
‘How soon can we strike?’ Seymour asked, hoping not to appear desperate, but really, the comtesse left unchecked promised to be problematic.
Eagleton fingered the file and thought for a moment. He looked across the table to Sefton. ‘Almost immediately, if we like. We just have to feed these rumours to the right sources and then we’ll let the London gossips do their work.’
Seymour grinned. The sooner they could expose the comtesse and flush out Deveril’s true position, the better. He shifted in his seat. Soon she’d be imploring him to forgive her. She’d be sorry she’d ever forged that deed. He knew exactly how he’d make her beg: on her knees, straddling his cock the way she’d straddled Deveril’s in the summerhouse.
Chapter Sixteen
One, two, three steps and three steps again was all that separated her from him. Channing quietly shut the door to Lord Evert’s library behind him and stepped into the dimly lit room. Alina stood at the console, her back to him as she played with the decanters. Ah, her delicious bare back. Well, her almost bare back. A stab of desire hit him hard, making him want to forgo the conversation and go straight to assignation. She’d worn peach chiffon tonight, tailored to perfection over the curve of her delicate shoulders, the low vee of her bodice mirrored by the low vee exposing her back.
She knew how to dress to her advantage from the combs in her hair to the slippers on her feet. Not a single item was haphazardly selected. But it wasn’t only the clothes and the accessories, it was everything else: the buffed nails, just in case one saw her without her gloves, the light scent of her toilette, the discreet use of cosmetics. And yet a man would never mistake her for an empty-headed fashion doll. She was very much alive; it was there in her eyes when she looked at him, in her smile, in the sound of her laugh, in the way she’d risen against him today in the carriage in her passion. It made him feel alive in return.
There was no woman in London who compared and he wasn’t the only man in the ballroom who’d noticed. Lady Evert’s ball was an absolute crush, one of the biggest early events of the Season. People were eager to see and be seen after the long winter and Easter break. Plenty of people had noticed Alina. The sight of other men watching her, dancing with her, their hands at her waist or on her arm, had stirred something primitive and possessive in Channing.
No matter that she could handle herself in such a setting, he wanted to be the one, the only one, ever, to be the recipient of that smile, of that laugh. To know at the end of the night, he’d be the one to slip those beautiful gowns from her shoulders. Channing felt his groin tighten in response. She was lost in thought and had not heard him yet. It would be simple enough to come up behind her, bend her over the console and take her most thoroughly. It was wicked and fast and it did little cosmetic damage to one’s appearance. One could be put to rights almost instantly.
‘Don’t even think it.’ Alina’s sultry tones were quiet in the dark room.
Damn. She’d noticed him. ‘Don’t think what?’ Channing couldn’t help but ask. She was right, of course. To do it now would completely derail what he’d come here for.
‘Using the console as a staging area for something other than pouring drinks.’ But there was no scold in her voice. There was the clink of stoppers being removed, followed by the sound of liquor flowing into glasses. She turned towards him and offered him a drink. ‘Are you sure we’re safe here?’
‘No one reads at a ball.’ Channing laughed. ‘The Everts don’t read at all. I think we’d be safe in this room in the light of day. We could probably live here before the Everts noticed.
Alina settled herself on the little sofa, her skirts pooling about her. ‘Have you thought of your answers?’ She was playing it cool tonight, putting the onus of the conversation on his shoulders.
Channing took the chair near the sofa. The dim light and the brandy was helping. He took the plunge, revealing a piece of his soul, but protecting the rest. ‘When I ask myself why I would help you with Seymour, it is because my feelings are engaged yet again where you are concerned. Should my attentions not be welcomed, I would prefer to walk away now. I would leave you the services of my solicitors, but any further contact between us should be discontinued.’ It sound fairly stiff, fairly formal when he couched it in those terms, a lot less like the lines running through his mind at present: I could fall in love with you again. Indeed, there’s no could about it—I have. What I feel with you is nothing I’ve ever felt with anyone else and I have to know—will you hurt me again?
He waited, watching her process the carefully chosen words and then pick a carefully worded response of her own. He noticed everything about her in those tedious moments: how the firelight played on the white-gold of her hair, how her fingers played with the pearls at her throat.
‘You’ve not thought this through, Channing. You only think you’re in love with me,’ she stated softly. ‘But when you look at the practicalities you’ll know better.’ She was talking about the scandal that would follow her always. He didn’t care. He’d quelled those silly ru
mours once before, he would do it again if need be. ‘You will tire of fighting for me eventually. Although I appreciate the sentiment.’ She’d read his mind. ‘I don’t deserve such a knight, Channing. I’m really quite ruined goods. I’m not capable of returning such sentiments.’ Then she was cruel. ‘Are you sure? I will cost you the agency, your lifestyle. I will not marry another man who treats his vows lightly.’
Her set down had been prettily done up until then. But that last was a slap in the face on two levels. She’d compared him to the comte and she’d done so by referencing the Christmas fight, that the agency was an excuse for promiscuity. Channing straightened. He’d known this would come up. It was one of the unpleasant things they had to discuss. ‘Those words were a mistake on my part, spoken in the heat of argument,’ Channing replied.
Alina set down her glass. ‘I would hate to become another mistake. It would not be only your emotions that were engaged should we pursue anything. I would not want to wake up one day and discover you’d been wrong about your feelings.’
‘It was not my feelings that were mistaken,’ Channing corrected. ‘I was unaware at the time that you would be jealous of any advances I made elsewhere. If I had understood what you really wanted from me, I would have pursued a different course of action.’ Lord, this was a stilted conversation, but they were both trying so hard to protect themselves. There was consolation in that. He was not the only vulnerable party here.
‘You should have asked.’ Alina took a healthy swallow of the brandy.
London's Most Wanted Rake Page 15
