To Win a Scoundrel's Heart (The Lords of Whitehall Book 2)

by Kristen McLean

  When all he did was raise an eyebrow at her, she stood and began pushing him out.

  “Leave… or… I shall scream!” she ground out.

  He winced and grunted, obviously still hurting from whatever had happened to him, but he did not move.

  “I would not do that if I were you,” he said matter-of-factly, pushing the errant lock back into place and straightening his cuffs.

  “Oh? And why not?” She was still pushing against his chest in short bursts.

  He smiled and grabbed her wrists on a push. She fell into his chest. His very solid, warm chest.

  “You ought to not hit me. I am wounded.” He pouted with a small smile teasing the corners of his lips.

  “Why would I not scream?” she ground out, trying to ignore the heat of him engulfing her.

  He lowered his head and whispered as though it were a secret, “You forget I know who you are. I could tell anyone.”

  “You would not dare,” she said as she glared daggers.

  He straightened. “Care to find out?”

  The provoking man knew she couldn’t take that chance.

  With a final shove, she ground out through clenched teeth, “No, I would not.”

  Her final push dislodged the lock of hair again, and it fell above his eye.

  He sighed, and she realized just how much he worked at looking impeccable. The man did not realize how dangerous he was when he was disheveled.

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I cannot tell you all my secrets,” he drawled with obvious amusement. “You would have me out of a job inside a fortnight, seeing as you have already identified and infiltrated the enemy. Poor Chouvigny has no idea what he has coming.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I missed you.” He smiled wryly. “It is terribly boring without your beautiful face scowling at me at every turn.”

  “I do not s—” She stopped herself short, realizing that since she had met this beautiful, irritating man, she had scowled quite a bit. Her reserve must be slipping. To be fair, he could make the statue of Our Lady of Peace appear exasperated.

  Céleste raised an eyebrow. “I met a boy today: old enough to get into trouble, wide smile, penchant for being heroic, handy with a gun, sounded an awful lot like you… Do you know him?”

  “André.” His lips spread into a proud grin. “My son.”

  “Your son? But he looks nothing like…” Her words faded when she realized what she was saying. If André wasn’t his son, then some trollop must have tricked him into caring for the boy.

  “Adopted,” he explained. “You know, he could have looked like his mother.”

  “He must be the one you spoke of who would be better off without your example,” she mused.

  André had acted rather gallant for being a scoundrel in the making.

  Pembridge nodded.

  Strange, she had never thought of him as a father. The thought warmed her to him, if only a little.

  “He seems like a fine boy,” she said. “I am sure he told you how he rescued me. I shudder to think what would have happened had no one taught him to be a cocksure gunman,” she said.

  “Being cocksure is inherently male. I cannot take the credit for that.”

  “Nor can any boys’ school in Paris,” she pointed out. “They are miserable failures.”

  The sandy lock still twisted above his eye with a few others ready to fall over his forehead. He should let them fall. It was attractive and in fashion, a romantic style.

  She reached up to feel the strands that annoyed him so. They were thick and soft, and she wanted to tangle her fingers in them.

  She pushed them back, only to have them fall down again.

  She chuckled. “Why do you not use pomade?”

  “Why do you not stay away from me?”

  Her humor faded as she met his intense, blue gaze.

  “You forced your way into my room if you will remember,” she replied crossly. “Quite rudely.”

  “I cannot simply stand by while you get yourself killed. You might as well hop down to the docks and ask if anyone knows any of Chouvigny’s henchmen. Be sure to say you are unarmed and have brought a good-sized purse to tempt them with.”

  “Preposterous. That would be insane,” she muttered.

  “This is insane.”

  “This is progress,” she shot back challengingly, “which is more than can be said for whatever it was you were doing.”

  “Oh, progress,” he drawled, nodding. “I see. And what progress, pray tell, have you made as Chouvigny’s drudge?”

  Céleste’s eyes narrowed at him defiantly.

  He shook his head with a smug smile. “Secrets, secrets.”

  She was nearly positive he was only happy when she was irritated with him.

  “Leave,” she seethed, “before I find something in this room to brain you with.”

  “Promises, too,” he said with raised brows. “By Jove, what a well-rounded lady.”

  “Don’t press your luck, Pembridge.”

  “If I don’t, no one will,” he answered simply. Then he chuckled. “This is ridiculous. No matter how hard I try, I have not an ounce of resolution. Not after you mussed my hair and laughed at me. You are the wickedest of women, you know.”

  “You forget yourself!” she scolded.

  “And you forget one very important thing.” His smile broadened as her scowl darkened.

  Céleste raised one reluctantly questioning brow, then shrieked when his arms wrapped around her, dragging her flush against him. His blue eyes smoldered mere inches from her own.

  “You forget I am a scoundrel, m’dear,” he murmured, smiling wolfishly. “And you are especially beautiful when you are angry. When you laugh, my heart skips. A mere glimpse of you leaves me breathless. It would be against my nature to resist you.”

  Céleste’s eyes widened in shock, and she shook her head against the fluttering in her chest. “Then close your eyes.”

  Her breathing stopped when he bent to kiss her neck.

  “I would still smell you, and you smell delicious.”

  His big, hard body was pressed against her, and the soft warmth of his mouth was sending shivers over her skin.

  “D-delicious?”

  “Mm-hm,” he rumbled lowly.

  She felt the warmth of his tongue on her neck and the light nip of his teeth.

  “Better than a raspberry trifle.”

  His touch was melting her insides. When he moved to cover her lips with his, the soft pressure silenced what was left of her objections. She couldn’t deny it was what she had wanted since he held her on Mrs. Talbot’s balcony.

  He wound his arms around her, holding her to him as he drank from her. Unfamiliar aches and tingles curled through her belly and weakened her legs. He took her bottom lip into his mouth with a gentle suction, grazed it with his teeth, then let it go before repeating the slow torture over again.

  Céleste felt her chest constrict with every gentle touch of his hand and tender slide of his lips against hers. When he pulled her closer, it was a request, not a command, an invitation for more. The way he touched her felt so much like affection, something she had not felt in a very long time.

  A single unbidden tear escaped and trailed down her cheek, and a silent sob caught in her throat.

  He pulled away with a knit brow, wiping away the offending tear with his thumb as he cupped her face. “There is nothing to cry over. If you want me to stop, I shall.”

  “I am not crying,” she insisted.

  “You have only to ask,” he continued. “It may kill me, but I am willing to sacrifice—”

  “Pembridge, if you keep talking, I shall have to strike you.”

  His lips curled into a slow smile. “Nick,” he murmured. “Call me Nick.” With his hands still on her cheeks, he bent to place small, singular kisses on her lips.

  “Nick,” she whispered back, her hot breath mingling with his.

/>   When his mouth left hers to move over her jaw and neck, she lifted her hands to tangle in his hair.

  “We both know this is impossible,” he mumbled into her neck.

  “Utterly,” she breathed.

  “Impossible and inevitable.” He grazed his teeth along the sensitive skin below her ear. “Perfect. Beautiful.”

  Nick had taken leave of his senses, obviously, but he had never thought insanity could feel so marvelous. She was different from anything else he had ever experienced. Her heat was more intense, her touch electric. Her tears, heaven help him, twisted his gut. He truly must be the lowest of reprobates, because he still wanted her, tears and all. He wanted to stoke her passion to such a fevered pitch that she would cry from the mere ecstasy of it. He kissed her neck where her frantic pulse gave her away, and it excited him that he could do this to her—that they could do this to each other, for he could not deny that she affected him just as thoroughly. He was ready to explore just how thoroughly when he heard something that didn’t belong. Footsteps.

  Nick barely had time to straighten before he had the air knocked out of him. The door had been thrust open into his back, and he was flung forward, catching himself with his hands on either side of Céleste’s head.

  Her eyes flew open, and for a mere second, their gazes locked, his undoubtedly flashing equal parts dread, pain, and apology. Then he was wrested off her, giving both Nick and Céleste a perfect view of their uninvited guests.

  “If it isn’t the worthless maid, Céleste,” Madame Renaud drawled from the doorway. “I told you I heard something, Marcel.”

  “And the nosy Englishman,” Marcel added as he grabbed Nick’s pistol. “It is our lucky day.”

  Nick could have listed a dozen skilled mercenaries he would rather have in front of him at this moment than Madame Renaud. As an assassin for the Home Office, Nick had had the misfortune of crossing her path exactly three times. Each time he had gone in for the kill, and each time she had slipped through his fingers, laughing as she left a wake of lifeless bodies behind her. She was the kind of killer the Director would tell horror stories about, hoping to scare young recruits. Seasoned agents already knew to be afraid.

  “If it isn’t the she-devil and her dog,” Nick drawled with a crooked smile. “Must be a slow day in hell for you to be wasting time on us. No hapless victims to torment? Stray children to slaughter? Puppies to drown?”

  “You read too many novels, my lord,” Renaud purred as she stepped up to him and stroked his cravat suggestively.

  “It is a weakness, I admit.” Nick forced a grin. “But the villains in novels are so much prettier than those in reality. Don’t you think?”

  “Mouthy sod!” Marcel growled.

  “Did you know I was here, mon cher?” Renaud asked, still toying with his cravat.

  “If I knew you were here,” he said with thinly veiled repulsion as he pushed away her hand, “I would not have broken in. I would have burnt the building down with you inside and asked the pope himself to send your soul to the devil.”

  “Currish rot!” Marcel grabbed Nick’s lapels and yanked, shoving him out into the hall and against the opposite wall.

  Nick fell to the ground, grunting and hugging his sides from the sharp pain to his ribs.

  “Still feeling your last beating, but too thick to stay away?” Marcel scowled as he stepped toward Nick, flexing his fists.

  “That is enough, Marcel,” Renaud spoke up from where she still stood inside the little room. “Chouvigny will want him alive. The maid, however, is all mine.”

  “She has done nothing,” Nick insisted from the floor, all mocking confidence wiped from his countenance.

  The warning he had received in the street had been enough for him to know their punishment would not be kind for a spy, female or not.

  “Nothing? Is that what you Englishmen call it now? We call it copulating in the servants’ quarters.” Renaud laughed. “Lock them in the cellar, Marcel.”

  “Let her go,” Nick warned, “or I swear I shall end your miserable existence with my bare hands.”

  She turned to Nick and sneered. “I look forward to it, mon cher. I have special plans for your strumpet. If you are fortunate, I may let you watch.”

  “She is a lady, Renaud,” he added with a tinge of desperation. “Wealthy and quite influential. You are in over your head.”

  “And isn’t it a shame she gave her notice in the morning and left. Rather sudden, I suppose,” she mused smugly. “But, then again, we have so many servants in and out, and she was a terrible maid.” Then the witch laughed.

  He tightened his jaw against his aching ribs and forced himself to his feet to stalk determinedly back into the room. He had never been tempted to hit a woman before, but now he could think of few things he would rather do than drive his fist into Renaud’s smug face.

  Before cresting the threshold, though, Marcel jerked him back.

  He twisted to drive his elbow into the bruiser’s stomach and then followed it with a hard right cross, sending Marcel into the doorjamb with a grunt and giving Nick an opportunity to grab his cane from the side table… and the concealed blade inside.

  Nick slid the blade out and positioned it under Marcel’s chin, holding the cane in his other hand.

  “Back up,” Nick ordered softly.

  He and Marcel inched their way back toward the open doorway.

  “Céleste, come out—”

  The words died on his lips when Renaud stepped out with a dagger at Céleste’s throat.

  “Go ahead; kill Marcel. Then you can kill me. But, by then, your strumpet will be dead,” she threatened, imitating a pout.

  Nick had the sword, but he would have to take care of Marcel before getting to Renaud. By that time, she would be laughing in a puddle of Céleste’s blood. If it were just Nick, he would kill both Marcel and Renaud without a thought, but he couldn’t sacrifice an innocent’s life—Céleste’s life.

  With the sour taste of failure and dread filling his mouth and a rising anger at himself, he dropped the blade.

  Marcel immediately rushed over and twisted Nick’s arm cruelly as he snatched the sword from the floor. The blade was pressed to Nick’s neck so hard a drop of blood beaded and trailed down to his collarbone.

  “To the cellar, Marcel,” Renaud ordered triumphantly.

  Marcel shoved Nick to begin their trek down the hall. His ribs screamed against the movement, and he bit back a curse. By now, the pain was nearly unbearable.

  He could hear Renaud and Céleste behind him as they turned and started down a short flight of stairs to a heavy wooden door. Even if he tried to take Marcel here, Renaud had Céleste at knifepoint, and with his ribs in this condition, he wasn’t going to be doing much damage to anyone but himself.

  “Don’t worry,” Renaud cooed in Nick’s ear as Marcel opened the door. “You will not have to wait long.” She trailed a long nail lightly down his cheek and neck, ignoring the revulsion he didn’t bother to hide. “By tomorrow, I shall be back and ready to finish our business. You know, our little group is larger than you thought, Pembridge. We are strong.”

  Renaud flicked her head at the black abyss, and Nick was shoved unceremoniously, along with Céleste, through the doorway and down several old wooden steps. He missed all but the last two, hitting them mostly with his shoulder. He rolled with a pained grunt as agony shot through his torso.

  The door was shut with a resounding thud, leaving the two of them in complete darkness. Carefully, Nick started to lift himself up, hoping the fall had not broken the rest of his ribs.

  “Céleste? Are you all right?”

  Nick cursed when he heard neither movement nor an answer. He had not seen which way she had been shoved or where she had landed. She could have taken a tumble over the rickety balustrade and broken her neck.

  Ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs, he began searching the ground until he found a bundle just a few feet from him.

  “Wake up.” Nick ground
his teeth as he pulled her halfway onto his lap. His heart raced as he checked her head with careful fingers, feeling for bumps or blood. He cursed when he found a wet patch high on her temple.

  Nick lifted her higher up on his chest, cradling her head in the crook of one arm and supporting her small frame with the other until her little moans cut through the darkness.

  “Céleste, can you hear me?” he asked worriedly. “Are you all right?”

  “I… I cannot see,” she said, panicked.

  “It is dark,” he said amusedly. “We have been tossed into the cellar, remember?”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed out. He felt her hand come up to touch his chest as she pressed her cheek against him. “You saved my life at the risk of your own. Why?” Her voice came out softly.

  “I beg your pardon?” Nick asked incredulously while she lay against his chest and fiddled with his waistcoat.

  “Why did you save me?”

  “I heard the question,” he returned grimly. “It is absurd, and I was giving you an opportunity to withdraw it.”

  “You could have let them kill me and saved yourself,” she said with that same small voice, so unlike her. It worried him. Perhaps she had hit her head too hard. “Then you would not have to worry about me ostracizing you. You would have your precious ton and no one forcing you into anything. Not to mention, you would not be here.”

  “Mm, yes, that would have been much more convenient, wouldn’t it? Dashed unfortunate it would be neither gentlemanly nor honorable.”

  “Thank you,” she muttered. She slid her hand up hesitantly from its spot on his chest to tangle in the hair at his nape.

  “No need to thank me for being honorable,” he murmured, forcing his arms to lay limply at his sides. “Perhaps now you will believe there are such things as honorable rakes.”

  He felt a shock of pain as she slapped his face.

  “Easy!” he warned.

  “We would not be in this mess if you had not barged into my room,” she bit out.

  He leaned his back against the wall lazily, unable to decide whether he ought to kiss her or toss her off his lap to deal with the darkness and rodents on her own. She might prefer the rodents. But her soft derrière felt incredible. She felt incredible. And a man deserved some sort of luxury before being sent to Hades to burn for eternity.