“Because she intended to get her claws into the Franchot fortunes.”
“Because she intended that her daughter should eventually marry her best friend’s son.”
He covered his eyes with a forearm and muttered, “Blackmail.”
“Posh!” Anabel said. “True, I have placed certain letters with my solicitors. But I did so because it is businesslike to make provisions. It would seem only professional to ensure one’s safety.”
He felt incredibly morose. “In case I decide to have you killed in your sleep, you mean?”
“Of course not.” Anabel’s laugh tinkled. “Why would you? We both know I have no intention of telling the world that you are not the Duke of Franchot.”
“Enough. I have warned you never to speak of that.”
“So you have,” she said. Her smile became cunning. “I would merely caution you not to forget that you and I are bound together now, and that we always will be.”
Even while his head pounded and his flesh felt numb, he knew the curl of fear in his belly. “What was arranged at the time of Lady Philipa’s birth cannot be put aside,” he said. “She will become my wife.” Anabel appeared to be the only one in their set who didn’t understand the true importance of his marriage to Lady Philipa.
Anabel lifted a leg and stood with one foot on either side of his hips. Gradually, she raised her skirts until he was presented with an unimpeded view of her woman’s parts. “Any hope of an improvement in your present condition, my love?” she asked, spreading her legs wider.
The numbness lifted—as did other aspects of his being. “Get down here,” he hissed, grabbing her ankle. He could see her moist readiness. He could smell her lust.
Dropping the skirt, she undid the tapes on her bodice, her pointed tongue clasped between her teeth as she did so. “You are bound to me,” she said, hunching her shoulders forward to slip off the bodice. “We will always be bound together.”
Her breasts spilled forth, large and white and red-tipped. Planting her hands on her hips, she bent her knees and leaned forward to sway above him until he felt his flesh leap so solid he gasped.
“I’m what you want, Etienne,” she said. “What you have to have.”
With the sound of his own low growl in his ears, he reached up to squeeze and fondle her. “Sit on me,” he begged. “Please, Annie.”
“Get rid of the Chauncey girl.”
He rocked his head from side to side. “I can’t. You know I can’t. She was betrothed to me on the day of her birth.”
“She was betrothed to the man whose place you took.”
He grew still.
“You, my dear Etienne, are like me. You are a bastard.”
His mind became oddly, coldly, clear. She had never exactly called him that before. The fact that he did not know his father had been stated in many different ways, but never so baldly as for her to call him a bastard. Distractedly, he resumed fondling her breasts. Something was afoot here—something different.
“Am I wrong?” she asked.
“We know you are right,” he told her. “We also know that it is exceedingly dangerous to speak of such matters.”
“I’m glad I have your attention.” With that, and with unerring accuracy, she dropped to her knees and impaled herself upon his rod. Steadily, slowly, rhythmically, she raised and lowered herself, drawing him off the ground to meet her with each withdrawal.
“You are a bastard and so am I.” She levered herself up, inch by inch. “The difference between us lies in the fact that, whilst both of our mothers started their careers as common whores, my father was a nobleman—yours was—”
“Enough.”
With hidden, well-developed little muscles, Anabel squeezed him tight. “Your father was someone your mother could not even name.” She started her next descent. Raw drive to join her in the dance almost crazed him. “Your mother hatched a very clever plot. True, a plot based on fury at being abandoned by a lover is a weak motive for replacing his son with her own—but she pulled it off.”
Sweat bathed his body. He needed to throw her aside—to banish her. Possibly he needed to kill her to silence her forever…although there were the letters she frequently reminded him of…
Most importantly at this moment, he needed to empty himself into her.
“Funny to think of our mamas as struggling little prostitutes at Lushbottam’s.”
“Don’t.”
“You really ought to visit there sometime. I do think you’d enjoy that crone’s lady tailors. Quite entertaining, I assure you.”
“I will never go there,” he said through his teeth.
“But so much of your history is there,” Anabel persisted. “It was there that you were born. And it was there that your mama met the woman who made sure you got where you are today.”
“For the love of God!” Etienne said. “Do not continue to say these things aloud.”
“It was at Lushy’s that your mama told my mama about how she’d arranged to have the real duke stolen and murdered.”
His body was drenched. He couldn’t summon the energy to do what he desperately wanted to do—to take her by the throat and squeeze.
“Enough of the past,” she said in a crooning tone. “The present is far more important to us. Let us think about Calum Innes.”
Etienne closed his eyes.
“Calum Innes was at Lushy’s tonight.”
His arms dropped to his sides.
“He went in a Stonehaven carriage, stayed for some time, then left in a great hurry.”
Sweat began to cool on his skin. “Why would he be there?”
Anabel shifted her hips and he shuddered. “Who can be sure why he was there?” she said. “Perhaps everything did not die with the child and with our mothers.”
“Enough!” He shoved her off, sending her sprawling, and struggled to stand and straighten his trousers at the same time. “Never speak of this subject again. Do you hear me? Never mention it again.”
“You are not the Duke of Franchot.” She parted her lips in a snarl and scrambled away from his grabbing hands. “You are a bastard who was placed in the rightful Duke of Franchot’s cradle while his family was distraught over the death of his mother.”
“Stop it!”
“Your mother was a whore spurned by the real duke’s father. He spurned her when he discovered she had many men and that you had been conceived while he was on the Continent. She did what she did intending to eventually use you to get everything she thought should have been hers as that man’s paramour.”
“But she died,” Etienne said, reeling, following Anabel but hampered by the effects of the drink. “She died and no one should ever have been any the wiser.”
“But they were,” she shrieked. “She bragged to my mother, and in time, my mother told me.”
“We had been childhood friends,” he reminded her, desperate now. “Before old Lord Wallister died, he made certain you and your mother wanted for nothing and that you married Hoarville.”
“But then I learned about you, and you had so much more to offer than that sickening, grabbing old fool Hoarville.” As if she sensed that his strength had failed, she stood up and faced him. “So I decided it was only right that you and I should have the pleasure of living your lie together.”
He frowned at her. “But…”
“But I was married. Yes. Was. As I have already told you, I had to marry the man my father chose for me or risk raising suspicions about my motives for trying to refuse. But I poisoned Hoarville for you. I have paid for you, Your Grace.”
He eyed her with wary disbelief. “You poisoned your husband?”
She tossed her head. “He was old. It was time for him to set me free for the role I was intended to play—as the Duchess of Franchot.”
“No,” he said stubbornly. “My marriage is arranged and must go forward. Why won’t you understand that I have to have access to the port on Chauncey’s Cornish lands, and the only way to secure that ac
cess—and the actual use of the port—is by marrying the girl?”
“You are a fool. Listen to me well.” She had not bothered to replace her bodice and advanced upon him, her naked breasts quivering from the power of her emotion. “You must listen or you are finished. Think. Innes all but forced his way into your life.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to concentrate.
“Now he turns up at Lushy’s,” Anabel continued. “Doesn’t that seem a coincidence to you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, utterly miserable.
“Thanks to the former Duke of Franchot—your esteemed mother’s one time protector—Lushy’s establishment became the sought-after diversion it is today. Lest you may have forgotten the details, it was at Lushy’s that the duke first encountered your mama, the fair Florence Hawkins.”
“So help me, if—”
“I am helping you. Does it not seem possible that the reason Mr. Innes was at Lushy’s—in light of his having deliberately placed himself in your way—is because he is, in fact, attempting to check out your pedigree?”
Horror weakened Etienne’s knees. He backed up and collapsed into the nearest chair. “You’re mad,” he whispered. “Why would anyone do such a thing? There is no evidence against my claim. There never was any evidence.”
Anabel bent over him, her hands supporting her weight on the arms of his chair. “Never was? What of the real duke? What of the baby who was taken from his cradle at Franchot Castle?”
He was in danger of casting up his accounts. “Dead,” he murmured. “Murdered. My…She paid for it to be done.”
“She paid.” Anabel’s smile was a sickening, suggestive thing. “Who saw proof that what she paid for was accomplished?”
“It was accomplished,” he whispered.
“What if Chauncey’s gotten wind of something?”
He breathed through his mouth and rested his head back. “Chauncey?”
“The fair Lady Philipa’s papa. What if someone went to him and suggested he ought to question the man to whom he’d promised his daughter? What if it’s been suggested that you have no more claim to the Franchot lands than any whore’s son, and that marrying his daughter to you will not guarantee the safe harmony of the Chauncey Cornish lands with yours?”
“I want Cloudsmoor,” Etienne said, breathing hard. “And I mean to have it, damn it. It was part of the agreement. Old Chauncey’s feet—when he is in England—are buried in Yorkshire. I cannot risk some upstart worming his way into that pallid little female’s affections and gaining control of her dowry. By God, it would mean being held to ransom every time a load of Franchot tin went on its way. No. No, I tell you. With my marriage to Lady Philipa, her father’s Cornish lands become mine. They are worth a fortune for that port alone and they will be mine.”
Anabel drove her fingers into his hair and gripped tight until his eyes flew open. “Wanting the Chauncey property may lose you everything. Do you understand?”
“I do not believe he has wind of anything. There is nothing left to trace what—to trace any of it.”
“What I have witnessed tonight means you can no longer be certain of that.”
“I am certain,” he insisted. “The woman Rachel, the snake man’s assistant, is dead. Florence Hawkins assured me of it.”
“But we have always known that the snake man’s assistant could have had help in disposing of the child.”
“No.” He would not think of this.
“You cannot hide any longer. If the child was indeed killed, Rachel may not have acted alone, and it is more than possible the mountebanks, Milo and Miranda, assisted her.”
“Pure speculation.”
Anabel tightened her painful grip on his hair. “You should have questioned the presence of those two at Lushy’s years ago.”
“There was always a connection between Lushy and the people who followed the fairs.” He detested to as much as mention that place.
“True,” she agreed. “And I put it to you that the only way Milo and Miranda could afford to take up a valuable room at Lushy’s is because they gave her something she thinks will be worth a great deal. I think they told her that Florence Hawkins arranged the murder of the former Duke of Franchot’s heir and left her own bastard in his place.”
Etienne finally tore her hand away. “My God, why must you continue with this absurdity?”
“Because I must. We both have too much to lose. Cry off with Lady Philipa and Chauncey will have no reason to persist. If he does so, it will be assumed that he seeks vengeance for the spurning of his daughter, and none will take him seriously.”
Etienne thought then, thought hard. After Florence Hawkins had approached him when the man he’d grown up thinking of as his father had died, there had always been the faint, sickening possibility that he could somehow be removed from the only life he had known.
“We could be married at once,” Anabel said.
“If you are right,” he said thoughtfully, “and I say if you are right, then on no account must I do anything other than go ahead with plans exactly as expected.”
“If you do, Chauncey will continue to look for evidence against you.”
“We have no proof he is looking at all.”
“I know that someone is, and it can only be Chauncey. Someone sent Innes with the instruction that he was to draw close to you by means of engaging Lady Philipa’s interest. He is looking for information on you.”
“Philipa would not lead him to Lushy’s.”
Anabel was red with emotion. “I tell you, they already knew of Lushy’s. Very possibly they were sent there by someone who knew what Rachel had done.
“Do not forget that it was at Lushy’s that your charming mother met Rachel, and that it was because of that meeting that the arrangement to place you at Franchot Castle came about. I believe the snake man’s assistant confided in Milo and Miranda. Now I believe that those two see a chance to reap great rewards by unmasking you to Chauncey. He would be likely to pay them well for saving his daughter from marriage to a bastard pretender.”
Etienne could not believe it—could not allow himself to believe it. “No. No, you are wrong.”
“I think Innes was chosen for this mission because he is attractive to women, and I am convinced Lady Philipa has already been ensnared by him.”
Etienne laughed shortly. “You mean that her plain and foolish head has been turned by his attention.”
“For whatever reason, she is besotted with him.”
His head had almost completely cleared. Only an annoying pain remained behind his eyes. “You, dearest Annie, are trying to incite me. You want to turn me against Philipa simply so that you may get what you want.”
“Have it your own way,” she said, turning her attention to refastening her gown. “I had not intended to mention this, but even as we speak, your betrothed is with that man.”
He stared at her for a long time before the import of her words became apparent. “You jest,” he said and guffawed. “And your jesting makes you ridiculous. Such a thing would not be possible.”
“Of course not.” She started for the door. “But since I am a little tired, I will lie down in her empty chamber until I find energy enough to return home.”
In a trice he was out of his chair and rushing after her into the hallway. “Stop this,” he whispered hoarsely, half-expecting some servant or relative to appear and start asking questions. “Stop at once.”
Ignoring him, Anabel led the way around the balcony above the vestibule and went directly to Philipa’s door. This she threw open, and before Etienne could stop her, she marched inside.
With Etienne in her wake, she crossed the sitting room to the bedroom and pushed its door open. She didn’t pause until she stood at the foot of Lady Philipa’s bed.
Etienne gaped.
“Do you see any slumbering virgin?” Anabel asked.
“Damn me.”
“She is at the Stonehaven house in Hanover Square. She is t
here, alone, with Innes.”
“I will kill him.”
Anabel appeared to think. “Mmm. No, I don’t think that would be at all the thing just yet. I think we have set matters up tolerably well. As long as we are agreed that we are working together for the common goal of achieving our marriage, I will help you make decisions that will ensure our permanent happiness.”
How he hated everything about this woman except the eager, welcoming place between her thighs and the abundant soft flesh he used to pillow himself while he availed himself of her. “Very well,” he said, suitably meek. “Guide me, Anabel.”
She all but ran to him and wound her arms about his neck. “Kiss me first, dearest.”
He did so, joining in the titillatingly coarse play of tongues that was one of her beloved sexual parodies. Before they were done, she had his hands inside her bodice and her hands inside his trousers and they both sank onto Lady Philipa’s pristine bed.
Within minutes he lay sated, his spent cock shriveling inside Anabel’s wet passage.
“That’s a good boy,” she crooned over him. “Always so good when you listen to your Anabel. This is the way it’s going to be.”
“Mmm?”
“We are going to be too clever for Lord Chauncey and Mr. Innes. We shall have both Mr. Innes and Lady Philipa at Franchot Castle, where we can watch them. Let us pretend we know nothing, but keep them very close.”
“I shall walk so close I may well step on their heels,” Etienne murmured.
“Caution, dearest, in all things,” Anabel said. Her recovery after sex was invariably enviable. “There is always the possibility that Innes may be drawing her into a flirtation simply to see how he can turn such a situation to his own ends. After all, she is an heiress worth catching.”
“In which case I shall kill him,” Etienne said sleepily.
“With my blessing,” Anabel agreed. “There is also the possibility that he is working for Chauncey but has learned nothing at all about you.”
“He will still die for what he’s done.”
“Exactly.” Anabel moved Etienne to a spot where he could rest his open mouth over a nipple. “But it is more likely he has found out something, yet does not have enough proof.”
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