His Wicked Secret (The League of Rogues Book 8)

by Lauren Smith

  Gillian laughed. “I suppose there’s a ghost or two in any old house. But we really ought to get changed and see if your sister needs help with anything.”

  Audrey gave her maid a pointed look. She was attempting to fall back into her role of servant and go unseen. “She has a fleet of servants, and you aren’t one of them. Now go and change into that lovely gown I bought you, the one with the white sash around the waist and little white flowers on the sleeves and hem. It will be perfect for tonight. You will look fetching.”

  Audrey ignored her maid’s sigh and walked down to her own room. A footman had set her valise on her bed, and a maid was already pulling out her clothes.

  “Which gown, miss?” the girl asked.

  “The coral walking dress with the blue trim.” Audrey removed her cloak and waited for the maid to help her change. She knew the coral would accent her fair skin with a hint of pink in her cheeks, and the blue trim made the pink of the coral stand out.

  “What’s your name?” she asked as the girl helped her dress.

  “Sarah.”

  Audrey smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Sarah.”

  Once Audrey was ready, she helped Sarah put away her clothes but paused when someone pounded on her door.

  “Yes?”

  Gillian burst into the room, her face red. “He’s here.”

  “Who?” Audrey asked, though she suspected she knew the answer.

  Gillian’s face went from red to white, and she looked close to fainting. “Lord Pembroke. He’s here.”

  Audrey had to fight off a grin and look concerned instead. “James? Really? Oh dear, you will have to see him, won’t you? That does complicate matters…”

  Her maid’s lips parted as though to protest. “You…we—” Gillian paused. “You didn’t invite him here for me, did you?”

  Audrey composed herself to look as innocent as possible. “What? No, of course not. You told me you wanted to forget, to move on. We are friends, and I respect that.” It was true she respected her friend, but that respect did not extend to allowing Gillian to run away from happiness at every turn. If she married at all, Audrey feared it would be to someone who would treat her the way she believed she should be treated. And that would not do. She had no intention of keeping her dear friend from the happy marriage she deserved. And if that required a bit of deception, Audrey was happy to suffer the consequences.

  “Yes,” Gillian muttered. “Of course.”

  “I suppose we will have to make doubly sure that he believes you are a lady, won’t we?” She pressed her fingertips together as she pretended to think.

  Gillian leaned against the closed door in defeat. “Perhaps I should feign illness for the remainder of the party?”

  That was a dreadful idea. “Nonsense! We should face this head-on. You saw him? Let’s go and have a little meeting and get it over with. You can say hello, he can say hello, and then we can return to the house.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Fetch your shawl and let’s go,” Audrey commanded. If there was one way to get Gillian to fall in line, it was to take on the air of a military general and issue orders. Besides, Audrey did not wish to face a house party alone. Horatia had contacted her yesterday by letter, informing her that Jonathan had not replied to his invitation to the party, and Audrey did not know how to feel about that.

  She waited while Gillian rushed back to her room to fetch her shawl, and then they left to find him.

  “Where did you see him?” James could have been in any number of places in the large house. It was quite like Gillian to run off and hide, and no doubt that was how she saw him.

  “In the gardens. I think they were playing croquet.”

  “They?” Audrey asked. “Someone was with James?”

  “Yes. He was with Mr. St. Laurent.”

  Audrey jerked to a halt, her heart pounding. He hadn’t planned on being here, or else he would have replied to his invitation. In the last week she had not heard from Jonathan about the lessons he had promised to give her, and she had begun to fear that he had changed his mind. There had been disappointment, but relief there as well, because sleeping with him, only sleeping with him was dangerous enough, even if it was only once a week. The last time, she had woken in his arms and thought her dearest wishes had come true, that she and Jonathan were together, married and happy, deliriously happy. Realizing that it was only a dream had crushed her. And now he was here, and she wasn’t at all prepared.

  I might make a fool of myself. Given how she acted whenever he was around, she knew it was only a matter of time before she did something reckless, like beg to be kissed again. She’d done her best in the last seven days to forget the thrilling events of the hellfire club and how alive she’d felt for the first time in months in the aftermath.

  Her friend eyed her with open concern. “You didn’t know he was coming?”

  “No, I was told he wasn’t coming.” She took a slow, deep breath, praying it would help her master her nerves. “Very well. We shall face the meeting together.”

  “Yes.” Her maid’s face was ashen. “We shall face them and run back to the house with our tails tucked between our legs.”

  That was true, but Audrey didn’t want to own up to it. “Nonsense. We are ladies of quality, Gillian. We do not flee. We walked briskly away from that which distresses us.” She declared this with a rather pompous and dignified air, yet it barely masked the panic she was feeling.

  Audrey focused on the walking path in the gardens, where some succession houses had been built. Horatia loved fresh fruits, so the houses had plenty of melons, grapes, peaches, and her own favorite, nectarines. As they passed by the houses, they came upon the large green lawn behind them. Jonathan and James were close to a small garden shack, putting away their croquet mallets. Ignoring Jonathan completely, she spoke to Lord Pembroke. “James!”

  Jonathan straightened from his bent position and hit his head on the shed. With a curse, he spun around, a scowl upon his face. Her pulse quickened as she saw those jade-green eyes flash like fire, and for a second she forgot to breathe.

  James ignored Jonathan’s plight and dusted off his palms on his trousers. “Ladies! Miss Beaumont, I’m pleased to see you again, and looking so well.”

  “Thank you,” Gillian said with a blush. For a moment Audrey forgot she was worried about meeting Jonathan. She was too overjoyed to see the warm looks between Gillian and James. It was destiny. The best she could do now was leave the two lovebirds alone.

  “Gillian, I’m going to check on the pineapples. Horatia asked me if I could.”

  “Pineapples?” Her maid’s confusion shadowed her questioning eyes. Gillian knew full well that Horatia had not mentioned any pineapples when they had arrived.

  “Yes. The pineapples.” Audrey stared hard at Gillian, hoping she would take the hint and play along. Gillian would assume that Audrey was trying to avoid Jonathan, which was partly true. But her main goal was to have James and Gillian spend some time alone together.

  “Oh…yes…” Gillian played along. “I do hope they are growing well.”

  “That is exactly what I shall go and investigate.” Audrey headed straight for the succession houses, relieved and disappointed to find she was alone. Jonathan had not come after her.

  8

  Jonathan watched Audrey stride away from the succession houses and was torn between laughing and growling in frustration.

  Pineapples. What poppycock.

  The sprite was avoiding him and using the ruse of fruits to do it. He was tempted to go after her, especially seeing the way her hips swayed back and forth in her delightful colored skirts. He’d teased her endlessly about such gowns, but one had to admit the woman knew how to dress—and how to torture a man with thoughts of stripping her out of those clothes.

  Once she was out of sight, he left James and Gillian and returned to the house. He needed help, and there was only one person he felt he could turn to. He found his intended counse
lor reading in the library.

  “Charles.” Jonathan shrugged out of his coat and joined Charles at a table. It was midmorning. He and James had arrived early at the grand country estate, but Charles had traveled a day ahead of them, and as such had already settled in.

  The Earl of Lonsdale glanced up from the book he was reading and quirked a brow in silent invitation.

  Jonathan swallowed hard, reluctant to ask for help but seeing no other choice. “I need your advice.”

  “From me? Good Lord, must be desperate. I’m the very last man anyone should come to for advice.” Charles leaned back in his chair, setting down the book he’d been reading. “Unless you wish to talk about women, boxing, or gambling.” He smirked. “So which of those three can I assist you with?”

  Jonathan picked up the book his friend had been reading and glanced at the spine. Lady Audrina and the Arrogant Gentleman. “You’ve read L. R. Gloucester?” Jonathan stared for a second at the lurid Gothic novel. “Wait, you actually read for pleasure?”

  Charles’s gray eyes lit up with challenging fire. “Why does everyone assume I don’t read? I love to read, and yes, Lucien got me onto these Gothic novels. Very inappropriate.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Heaving bosoms, seductions, dark towers and the like. What’s not to enjoy, eh? Besides, it can be quite useful in more playful seductions, which the ladies quite enjoy.” Charles nodded at the book. “You have to read that one. Lady Audrina is a bit like the Sheridan girl.”

  “Indeed.” Jonathan handed the book back to Charles.

  Charles held up a hand in refusal. “No, I insist. I’ve read this one twice myself. You ought to read it. The climax will put some fire back in your blood, eh?” He chuckled. “Now, what is it you need advice on?”

  “The aforementioned girl.”

  “Ah. Still running circles around you, is she?”

  Jonathan threw himself into a chair across from Charles. “Yes.”

  Charles gave a deep laugh, and Jonathan cringed. He already felt like a fool for coming, and this didn’t help matters. “And you all wonder why I have no desire to be married. If the lady has run you so ragged before she’s even dragged you to the altar, Lord knows what fresh hell she will put you through once you’re leg-shackled.”

  Charles’s grim view of matrimony wasn’t surprising; he had always been a bit of a wild one, certainly the wildest of the League. He knew about women, yet he always kept them at a certain distance. But he was always there for his friends or to lend his expertise in whatever way he could. Jonathan liked him immensely. Charles was the sort of man Jonathan used to enjoy meeting up with in the local taverns on his off days. There was a freedom to being around Charles, a careless disregard for anything that most other people would fret over. If Charles didn’t worry over something, it didn’t seem to be worth worrying about.

  “So, out with it,” Charles said. He was no longer the youngest pup in the League, and he’d taken Jonathan under his wing, something Jonathan had appreciated. Despite his growing closeness with his half brother, there was always a feeling of distance because of the past they shared, and that meant he couldn’t ask his brother things he could ask Charles about.

  “I believe I made a mistake.”

  Charles’s gray eyes turned bright. “A mistake? Now that does sound interesting. What kind of mistake?”

  “I had intended to propose to her, but I waited too long.”

  “How come?”

  “I wished to have my household up and running and my status in the ton more secure before I asked her to be my wife.” Jonathan toyed with the book in his hands, watching the afternoon sunlight catch on the gold-painted edges of the paper. He wondered idly how the bookmakers did that, made the edges glitter with color. He used to sneak into Godric’s library to admire the books and read them when he had the time. “It would not do to go into a matter of matrimony unprepared.”

  Charles’s lip twitched. “That sounds far too reasonable to be a mistake.”

  Jonathan frowned. He liked Charles, but if he kept smiling over his distress he was going to punch him in the jaw.

  “Yes, well, at some point during these delays, she gathered the wrong impression of me.”

  Charles raised brow. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Every time I am around her, she makes me so bloody aware of her…as a woman. I could barely behave myself, wanting to fall into old habits. So I kept running off, avoiding her. Now she’s convinced I’m a coldhearted bastard whose only interest is to toy with her.”

  “Reminds me of Lucien and Horatia.” Charles chuckled. “And we all remember how that turned out. Assassins on the loose, fires in the garden, terrible accidents and blindness—and let’s not forget the duel on Christmas Day. Things weren’t dull for a moment, were they?”

  Jonathan covered his face in his hands and groaned. Then he looked up at the ceiling, wishing for some kind of divine intervention.

  “So you mucked it up, and now she’s convinced you’re a villain? Is that about it?”

  Jonathan tugged at his cravat. It was suddenly too tight around his throat. “Yes. I did my best to talk to her, but it seems that was my other mistake. I only made things worse.”

  Charles’s gray eyes lit with amusement. “Oh dear, two mistakes. We might need a bit of liquid courage for this.” He rose and walked over the small cabinet by one of the bookshelves and retrieved a bottle of brandy that was tucked behind some dusty old tomes. “I hid a few of these around for just such an emergency, behind the books about sheepherding in Renaissance France. Nobody ever reads those.”

  “No glasses?” Jonathan asked.

  “Not here, good man. This is a library, not a drawing room.” He put the bottle into Jonathan’s hands. He uncorked it and took a long drink, then coughed. The brandy burned like fire.

  “What is this?” He noticed the bottle was unlabeled, and he shoved it back to Charles. His friend took a long drink followed by a heavenly sigh, and his eyes twinkled with mischief.

  “A little homebrew. Lucien’s cook makes it for me on the sly.” He pointed at the cabinet conspiratorially. “Good for a quick nip when you need it.”

  Jonathan gave a hoarse chuckle before he continued. “My third mistake was just last week. I went off your advice and decided to play the Tutor Gambit.”

  “The Tutor Gambit? Well played. Wait… You said it was a mistake?” Charles asked.

  “I took your strategy a bit further. I offered to teach Audrey to defend herself. In exchange for my lessons, I extracted a promise from her that she would sleep in my bed- with me- once a week.”

  Charles had the bottle to his lips when Jonathan delivered this, and Charles spewed out a fine mist of homemade brandy. Jonathan snatched the bottle away before he could spill more of it and set it a safe distance away on the table.

  Charles wiped his mouth and looked ready to double over laughing. “Teach her to defend herself so she will sleep with you? How does that even…?” Charles dissolved into boyish giggles.

  “She wants to learn how to fight. I had to rescue her from that hellfire club last week, and—”

  “I’m still furious with her for that. She told my lad Linley that she changed her mind.” Charles’s humor evaporated instantly.

  “Lucky for us, your man didn’t believe her.”

  “Well, perhaps some lessons in pugilism would do her good. She seems to get into all sorts of trouble.”

  “I agree,” Jonathan said. “Though I think you’ll agree that she will need to learn less gentlemanly techniques than those employed by Mr. Hughes in his book The Art and Practice of Boxing. After that experience, being around those devils, I think it gave her quite a scare. She told me she needed to learn to fight, to protect herself. I agreed to teach her, but on the condition that she share my bed once a week.”

  He could still picture her in the dining room of the club, firelight illuminating her as she fought like an Amazon, carrying a cat under one arm the entire time.

&n
bsp; Charles his lips twitched. “Are we discussing sleep? Or sleep?”

  “The former. My motivations were not entirely self-serving. She needs to learn how to be near to me so that she will not be distracted while I teach her. You know as I do that sparring brings the bodies close, especially the kind of lessons she would need to learn to protect herself.”

  Charles’s brow took on a mocking level of seriousness. “Oh yes, of course.”

  Yes, it sounded foolish now, but he had been desperate to find a way to be close to her. Since she’d made it clear she thought him a coldhearted bastard, he had to prove otherwise.

  Charles leaned back on the edge of the reading table. “So you intend to use these lessons in self-defense to seduce? How is that a mistake?”

  “Well, I think she might change her mind. I thought for sure she would reach out to me in the last week since we made the bargain, but she hasn’t. When I saw her in the garden just now, she bolted like a doe in the woods. I fear these lessons are my last chance to connect with her, to show her that I do in fact want her. But I fear talking with her won’t make a difference. She closes up on me whenever I start discussing matters of the heart.”

  Jonathan couldn’t help but note the irony of the situation. Audrey was happy enough to aid others in falling in love, but what about her own heart? Didn’t she want to be wooed and loved anymore?

  “It’s a pity that she won’t listen. All women want to do is talk, yet they never wish to listen when we are the ones who need to discuss our feelings.” Charles’s tone was oddly reflective. For a man who seemed determined to avoid marriage, he had an uncanny way of understanding women and the challenges of wooing them.

  “How do you know so much about women?” Jonathan couldn’t resist asking.

  “Because I’ve made it my life’s work. I am a genuine Casanova. I’ve never left a mistress unsatisfied, and my single-evening seductions have always been a success. And they, for their part, are never left expecting more. We each know where we stand. I study women the way any good hunter does his prey.”