The Undercover Scoundrel

by Jessica Peterson

  Caroline untangled her foot from her skirts. “No such luck, I’m afraid, but it does make our strolls much more exciting, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t. Let’s sit.”

  Caroline kept her arm tucked into the crook of his elbow as they sat on a bench set into a hedge of boxwood. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed William, his clever smiles, the way the skin at the edges of his dark eyes creased when he laughed. She’d forgotten how safe he made her feel. How welcome.

  Besides, the attention he received from his admirers—they were like bees, swarming, buzzing, out for the kill—was worth the exhausting, muddy ride down to London. Caroline had never before seen a woman deliberately drop her beaded reticule into a gentleman’s lap, only to retrieve it practically with her teeth.

  “Ah, Lady Bonham,” William had said. “We must give her credit for trying, however misguided her efforts.”

  Grinning at the memory, Caroline looked out over the lawn before them. A dozen children skittered across the emerald expanse.

  “But heavens, aren’t they darling,” she said, winking at a dark-haired baby burrowed into his nursemaid’s neck. Even as Caroline smiled, longing gripped her heart and squeezed.

  “They’re everywhere,” William said, and pulled up the edge of his coat at the approaching twins who’d somehow managed to escape their mother’s lap.

  Caroline caught each of the children by the arm and handed them back to their mother. “They don’t bite, you know. Unlike a certain person of our mutual acquaintance.”

  “That was merely a phase, dear sister, and lasted only a month or two besides.”

  She grinned. “I was fourteen the last time you bit me. Here, you can see the mark on my arm—”

  William waved her away, laughing. “If I had known you’d come all the way to London merely to torment me with tales of my sordid past, I would’ve never invited you in the first place.”

  “Ah, your sordid past! I’m so glad you brought it up,” she said, looping her arm through her brother’s once more. “While it’s quite dashing to live the life of a rakehell when one is two-and-twenty, I daresay dissipation is outré as one approaches thirty.”

  “Even for an earl?”

  “Especially for an earl.”

  William gave the ribbon that dangled from her bonnet a soft tug. “Then you will be glad to know I’ve found London, and its dissipated amusements, rather dull these past months.”

  “Dull?” Caroline arched a brow. “Even with all those debutantes to despoil?”

  William sighed. “Even so.”

  “Whatever shall you do?”

  A small, secret smile flickered at the corners of his lips. “I’ve an idea or two.”

  “Not marriage, surely?”

  “Dear God, no.”

  Caroline narrowed her eyes. William was up to something; she recognized that look in his dark gaze, the playful, if dangerous, intent lurking there. The look of the devil.

  “It’s got something to do with Mr. Hope’s ball tonight, doesn’t it?” she said. “Is that why you won’t allow me to attend? I confess I am disappointed; I do think that theme of the Sun King’s family jewels or what have you is quite clever.”

  William turned to her, his face studiously blank. “I am merely protecting your good virtue, Caroline. Hope’s soirees are notorious; everyone knows he spikes the punch with that damnably good stuff from his cellar. I won’t have you seduced by some idiot in a powdered wig and pumps thinking he’s a Sun King. It’s too soon.”

  Caroline grinned. “I like wigs.”

  “I know you do. That’s why you can’t go.” He took her hand and squeezed it, gently. “I understand you are just out of mourning, Caroline, and eager for diversion. We shall have a grand season, you and I; I shall show you all that London has to offer. But I beg you trust me about tonight. Get some rest and tomorrow we shall begin our tour.”

  Caroline sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder. “All right. On one condition: we start our tour this afternoon with an ice at Gunter’s.”

  “Excellent idea,” he said. “I do hope they still have the cheese-flavored ice. It’s my favorite.”

  “A cheese-flavored ice?” She wrinkled her nose. “You always did have a taste for the bold.”

  William took a long breath, let it out through his nose. “And what of you and marriage? You seem determined to enjoy your solitude.”

  It was Caroline’s turn to smile. “For once, you and I see eye to eye on the matter. As much as I miss my late husband, bless him, I wasn’t expecting to find widowhood quite so . . . freeing. I go where I wish, whenever I wish it. I don’t need a chaperone; heavens, I am the chaperone.”

  “I think you’d make a terrible chaperone.”

  “Thank you, Brother, I know coming from you that’s a compliment.” She grinned. “Besides. I don’t think I could bear another man’s follies. His moods.”

  I couldn’t bear more heartbreak. Caroline had experienced enough of that to last a lifetime. Even now, she saw in the faces of the men who passed another scheme, another lie, another heartbreak to be suffered.

  “Well,” William said, “since you wish to go to Gunter’s, I suppose we should scratch that itch before you launch into another speech.”

  She rapped him on the shoulder. “That was a good speech.”

  “Very good. Let’s be off.”

  William rose and with excessive caution helped Caroline to her feet. Heads bent, they began to walk—“Slowly,” William counseled, “carefully”—when Caroline looked up. She blinked, and blinked again when her gaze landed on a vaguely familiar outline some distance across the park.

  He was enormous, a broad-shouldered, ginger-haired predator with legs like tree trunks. His color was high, the cheekbones slicing across his face flushed pink, as a small grin of—was that satisfaction?—curled at his lips. Cords of vein and sinew stood out against the bare skin of his neck. Something about it—his neck—made Caroline feel warm, suddenly, like the sun had regained its noontime strength.

  Her heart stumbled inside her chest.

  The figure was moving quickly—not walking, not a run, it was more of a limp—down one of Hyde Park’s well-groomed pathways. His eyes were narrowed in concentration; one of his hands was tucked into the soft folds of his plain, if well-cut, kerseymere coat.

  He moved confidently, discreetly through the crush (as discreetly as could a ginger-haired giant, anyway). He ducked behind a thick-trunked tree, only to reappear halfway across a verdant lawn. He ducked again; Caroline frantically searched the crowd for his face.

  The last time she’d seen that broad-shouldered figure was twelve years ago in the garden at her family’s house. It couldn’t be him, he’d disappeared and for all she knew he was dead, or living out his days as a pirate in Damascus.

  Besides, who hurried about Hyde Park with his hand shoved in his pocket, and during the fashionable hour at that? It was so farfetched it bordered on the ridiculous.

  Which meant, of course, that it had to be him.

  Him, her husband.

  “Caroline,” William was saying. “Caroline, wait, where are you going? Is it a bee? Wait, you know I’m afraid of them, the last time I was stung my toe swelled to the size of an apricot . . .”

  She was charging across the park, legs moving in time to the wild echo of her pulse. The ribbons of her bonnet fluttered in her face, tickling her nose; she pushed them away. Her slippers squished in the damp grass. She kept moving.

  Like a shadow dissolved into night, he disappeared into Hyde Park’s hedgerows, into the tinkling bustle of the crush. He would vanish, only to reappear moments later; she could see the muscles in his jaw were drawn tight.

  She dipped and trudged and changed course as best she could in time to his movements; people began to stare but she stumbled over t
hem, breathing a hurried thanks to a gentleman who caught her by the arm before she launched heels over head into the Serpentine.

  Her legs ached and her lips burned, strangely, a prickle of sensation she felt in the center of her chest.

  At last she saw him. He was drawn up behind a copse of trees, sheltered from the prying eyes of passersby.

  He turned his head, and through the dappled green of newborn leaves Caroline and Henry Lake met eyes.

  A swell of pain, a tingling rush that was hot and cold and hard and soft all at once, moved through her. The ground tugged at her feet as if it might swallow her; she felt dizzy.

  His eye—his one eye, the other was gone, masked by a black leather patch—was as green as she remembered, translucent, probing. A searing flash of memory blinded her as she saw him as she had for the first time: vexingly handsome, alluringly mysterious. Although this time the skin at the edge of his eye did not crinkle quite so pleasantly; deep lines were etched there, creases that crept downward as if born of glowers and grimaces.

  Her stomach clenched. He was the same. He was different. Who was this man, this stranger—?

  “Heavens, Caroline,” William panted, bending over to rest his hands on his knees, “since when were you so light on your feet? Did you spot a particularly delicious child?”

  Caroline blinked, turning to look at her brother. “No. No, I thought . . . well, I thought I saw . . .”

  She turned back to the copse. It was empty; the half-naked trees groaned as a breeze rustled their branches.

  She shook her head. “It was nothing.”

  “Are you quite sure?” William asked, drawing upright. “It didn’t look like nothing. You were running like the devil.”

  Looping her arm through his, Caroline tugged him onto the path. “Shall we make for home? I do believe the hour for libation draws near.”

  “But what about Gunter’s? I was looking forward to that ice.”

  Forget Gunter’s, she wanted to say. Perhaps, if she got William drunk enough, he might not recognize her at Hope’s ball tonight. Surely she and her maid, Nicks, could cobble together a passably decent Madame de Montespan costume? A little powder and more rouge, and no one the wiser.

  At least she hoped powder and rouge would do the trick.

  For she had a funny feeling Henry would be in attendance at Hope’s ball. Despite her better judgment, despite the creeping sense that her brother was up to no good, despite her anger and her regret, Caroline would be, too.

  She couldn’t stay away. Not tonight. Not after all this time.

  Henry was back.

  Three

  Duchess Street, Near Cavendish Square

  Later That Night

  Henry brought the bottle to his lips and took one enormous, savage pull. The cognac burned brightly as it slid down his throat, but it did nothing to loosen the knot in the center of his chest.

  He’d seen her.

  The her. Caroline.

  Out of the tens and hundreds and thousands of people in London, he’d locked eyes with the one person he didn’t want to see across the emerald expanse of Hyde Park.

  The one person he’d sworn, twelve years before, to keep far from the violence of the life he’d chosen.

  Violence that found him even in the midst of Hyde Park’s shimmering tranquility. He’d had the distinct feeling he was being followed, hence his mad dash, the way he kept his fingers clamped down on the pistol tucked into his waistcoat.

  Nothing came of his suspicion, praise God. Still, she’d seen him. And he’d seen her.

  Even now his blood rushed hot at the memory of her face. She was just as beautiful as she’d been at seventeen, impossibly lovely. Those wide brown eyes, the dark, curling lashes he’d found so provocative a decade ago; the soft curve of her chin, the windswept way her temples sloped to sharp cheeks and smooth lips.

  God, those lips.

  She was beautiful, yes. But in that beautiful face he’d seen no trace of a smile, none of the lines that came from laughing too hard and too often. His entire body tightened when he thought about the look in her eyes: soft in all the wrong ways, like a wounded animal’s, and watery. She’d been pale, almost drawn, and thin; he saw no evidence of the curves he’d enjoyed so liberally in his bed twelve years before.

  Henry told himself she was still heartbroken over the loss of her husband; in Paris he’d received the news of the Earl of Berry’s passing. That explained her pallor, the wet unhappiness in her gaze. He couldn’t stand the thought that she’d loved, and been loved in return, by someone else (and his former best friend, at that). And yet the idea that Henry was responsible for her sorrow, that she had not found contentment in his absence, was even worse.

  His best friend. Caroline had married him not two months after Henry left England. Even now he still burned with jealousy that Osbourne had given Caroline what Henry could not. A home, a title, a family.

  Things a lovely girl like her deserved. Things that would make her happy.

  He slid his fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and pulled, hard. God but it was complicated. He couldn’t tell if he felt relieved, riled, remorseful. He drowned in all those things and more. Henry turned at the sound of ungainly footsteps—more clomps, really—and took another swig of cognac to keep from laughing.

  His old friend Mr. Thomas Hope tripped onto the balcony of his Mayfair mansion, leaning on his gilded walking stick as if for life itself. Immaculately, if gaudily, attired as the Sun King Louis XIV, Hope wore a towering wig of black curls that lent him the air of a disheveled pirate. The deep cuffs of his ivory silk coat, embroidered with gold thread, glimmered in the light of the setting sun above. The sash slung about his breast was studded with an impressive collection of rare jewels.

  Henry looked down to see the culprit of all that clomping: red-heeled pumps, fastened by diamond clips.

  Hope was nothing if not thorough. Henry allowed himself a small smile at the memory of their time together on the Continent. As partners in service to His Majesty the King of England (in crime, too), they’d taken Paris by storm; armed with Hope’s intimate knowledge of French banks, they’d managed to foil several of Napleon’s more nefarious plots. Hope was a good man and a better agent; even so, he’d left the service to establish Hope & Co. here in London.

  Now, as England’s preeminent—and wealthiest—banker, Hope had the blunt Lake did not. Which meant, of course, he had the means to purchase the French Blue from the Princess of Wales; which is exactly what Hope did some two weeks ago after Lake called in that favor.

  With the diamond in hand, Lake need only attract the attention of the French so that negotiations might begin. Hope hatched a plan to display the jewel at one of his infamously opulent balls, this one titled “An Evening at Versailles: The Jewel of the Sun King.” All of London had been abuzz for weeks after last year’s ball (its theme had something or other to do with those poison-loving Borgias), so what better way to set fire to Old Boney’s arse than with this debauched little soiree?

  “Give me that,” Hope said, swiping the cognac from Henry’s grasp. “I look ridiculous.”

  Lake shrugged. “But I thought you liked costumes? In France you were all too eager to don a disguise. Remember the time you played a one-armed butcher—”

  “This”—Hope impaled his wig with the gilded walking stick—“is a rather different scenario, don’t you think? The wig, the shoes . . . it’s a bit much, even for me. And dear God my head hurts.”

  “Small price to pay for king and country, my friend. Though it does make you wonder how old Louis managed it. Fellow must’ve been bald as a bat to wear a wig like that.”

  Hope set down the cognac on the stuccoed balustrade between them. “He was a masochist, no two ways about it. Actually, I’m beginning to think we have quite a lot in common.”

  They both turned toward the
house at the piercing sound of an opera prima donna warming up her instrument. The glass doors lining this side of Hope’s well-appointed residence were flung open to the warm breeze, revealing the ballroom within. Footmen and scullery maids and all manner of staff crisscrossed its marbled expanse in a frenzy of preparation; Hope’s first guests would arrive at any moment.

  Lake inhaled, the intoxicating, sweet-fresh scent of the lilies strewn about Hope’s ballroom filling his head. The knot in his chest tightened; that scent, those flowers, they reminded him of Caroline’s perfume. He would never forget the way she smelled: like spring, like warm nights, like sweetness and promise and possibility.

  He grasped the cognac between his thumb and forefinger and gulped, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

  Back to business. Business on which the lives of thousands of British soldiers depended; he did not have time to think about the past and its regrets. “When Bonaparte’s men make contact, send for me straightaway. And don’t lose sight of that diamond.”

  “And you”—Hope grabbed the bottle—“don’t drink all my cognac. It’s bloody impossible to get these days. Who do you think is going to steal the French Blue, anyway? Everyone who’s coming tonight can buy their own damned jewels. If I were to peg anyone, it’d be you. Besides, I hired twenty extra men to patrol the ballroom, just in case. Trust me, Lake. Nothing is going to happen.”

  Ah, if Henry had a copper for every time he’d heard that.

  “I don’t have to remind you there are no more famous last words than those,” he said.

  Hope turned to the ballroom at the sound of female voices, his first guests; Henry turned and in one swift, silent motion, launched himself over the balustrade.

  It was an admittedly self-indulgent move—he did so enjoy witnessing Hope huff and puff over his theatrics—but Henry had business to see to, and the night was getting on.