The Undercover Scoundrel

by Jessica Peterson

  Henry dipped his head, testing her. Still she did not pull away. Her breath was sweet against his skin.

  It was stupid.

  It was dangerous.

  It was rascally, and unforgiveable.

  But he was going to do it anyway.

  Before he could think better of it—they were in her brother’s front hall, for God’s sake!—he tucked his hand around her head and coaxed her to him, pressing his lips softly to her throat.

  Thirteen

  Caroline’s eyes fluttered shut.

  And in the space of a single heartbeat, she was lost in the tenderness, and the heat, of Henry’s kiss as his mouth moved to cover her own.

  She’d sensed his rising desire all evening: across the drawing room, and at the table during dinner. He vibrated with it, his eye darkening in a strangely familiar way that made Caroline’s belly turn inside out.

  She recognized his longing in her own. Ever since they’d planted the peonies together in the garden, she hadn’t stopped thinking about him, and how hard they had laughed. She hadn’t had that much fun in an age; really, since she’d climbed through the window of his bedchamber back in Oxfordshire after she’d married him in secret.

  There were no more diverting things in England than climbing through windows and secret weddings, after all. Oh, and manure fights.

  Those, too.

  Caroline had fought the rising tide of her desire for Henry. She’d tried reading, and walking, and replanting half her brother’s garden; but even days spent in the sun, her hands thrust up to her wrists in dirt, couldn’t keep her from thinking about his half smile, the pale skin of his wrist.

  She hated him for making her feel like this.

  She hated herself for allowing him to. She’d been so careful to avoid moments like these, men like him.

  And yet the shiver that darted up her spine when he brushed his knuckle across her cheek was impossible to ignore. The memory of his touch was its own kind of sweetness; but the reality of it was overwhelming, a different sort of sweetness, poignant, unbelievably lovely because it was happening here, now; and neither of them could take it back.

  His mouth was warm and soft against her own, possessive. His fingers were moving in her hair, trailing ribbons of fire along her scalp. He kissed her slowly, carefully, as if they weren’t standing in her brother’s front hall, stealing a caress; as if they had all the time in the world.

  He backed her against the wall, his legs spread wide to trap hers between them. He surrounded her; even through closed eyes she could sense the enormity of his body, the enormity of his longing.

  Caroline tasted the salt of her tears on his lips. His scent, the lemons and the spice, filled her head.

  Heat bolted through her, pooling between her legs. Henry’s lips pressed and asked and answered, moving from one corner of her mouth to the other. Both his hands were on her face now, angling her head so that he might kiss her more deeply. His palms felt rough, calloused against her skin.

  Where have you been? she wondered. Why did you leave?

  And why do I feel this way about you after what you did to me, how stupid you made me feel?

  But Caroline knew he wouldn’t answer her questions. She would probably never have the truth.

  She did, however, have this kiss. And she couldn’t have given that up if she wanted to.

  Henry stilled at the sound of approaching footsteps. Caroline’s entire being cried out at the loss of his caress, even as panic unfurled in her chest. Her eyes flew open.

  Oh God, she thought. William. If he caught her kissing Henry, he’d kill them both right there in the hall.

  She pulled away. “My broth—”

  Henry pressed a thumb to her lips, glancing over his shoulder. A beat passed. Caroline’s heart pounded in her ears. Henry still pinned her to the wall.

  With feline stealth he grasped her by the elbow and whirled her around the corner. Soundlessly he opened the door to her brother’s study, using his body to urge Caroline inside as he closed the door silently behind them.

  Henry held her against the wall beside the door, his body pressed to hers as he waited. They were both breathing hard.

  The darkness inside the study was complete and close; through the door Caroline could hear William conversing with the butler, Mr. Avery, in low tones. More footsteps, a few more words, and then all was quiet.

  Caroline was about to let out a sigh of relief when Henry took her mouth with his, resuming the kiss he’d begun in the hall. Hungrily he edged his body against her own, one hand on the wall beside her head, the other on her neck, his thumb grazing her jaw as she rose to meet his caress. Fire streaked through her, the kiss deepened, and he was opening her mouth with his lips, his tongue gliding to meet her own.

  She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. Everything was dark, and unbearably warm, but her body was alive, exquisitely, painfully so, as if her sight had lent its wide-eyed strength to her sense of touch.

  Her hands went to his chest. She should push him away.

  Instead her fingers reveled in the crisp thickness of his shirt, the velvet lapels of his dinner jacket. The muscles of his chest tensed beneath her careful touch. Oh, how she loved the feel of him, the firm softness of his flesh.

  The kiss was wild now, and she could feel the gentle press of his cock against her belly. The heat between her legs flashed with pain. Twelve years later, and she still wanted him the way she had in the wanton throes of adolescence.

  Twelve years later, and he still wanted her the same way. Or so she guessed from the hardness jutting out from his thighs.

  The wallpaper scraped the back of her neck. It would leave a mark. He was always marking her. She should stop, and put an end to this madness. They could be caught.

  But the thought of getting caught didn’t frighten her as it should. Instead it titillated her, and stoked the desire that pounded through her body.

  Even as her heart beat a staccato note—no, it seemed to say, no—she couldn’t stop the kiss. It seemed a sacrilege, after all the years of her loneliness, to give up on a kiss like this one. A kiss that she felt in her bones. A kiss that swallowed her whole, and made her glad to be alive.

  Funny, but the last two times she felt so glad were with Henry.

  Although she refused—refused—to believe that meant anything.

  His lips trailed from her mouth down the slope of her jaw, lingering on the tender place where ear met neck, before moving to her throat. Caroline sighed; he made an urgent, guttural sound, halfway between a growl and a groan. She felt his chest vibrate with it.

  Behind closed lids, her eyes rolled back with pleasure as his teeth found purchase in the skin there. Her head, too, fell back, and hit the wall with a solid thud.

  She froze.

  He froze.

  The house seemed to go still around them.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered.

  Caroline cracked open an eye, covering the offended spot on her skull with her fingers. “Yes.” She winced. “And no. That hurt like the devil.”

  Her lips felt swollen, and so did her heart. Her eyes must have adjusted to the darkness of closed lids, because she could see Henry, suddenly, like a ghost materialized from the dark. Startled, she drew back; he was enormous, and very close; his one eye glowed, a pale moon that threw no light into the blackness.

  For a moment they listened, waiting for the telltale footsteps, waiting to be found out.

  And in that moment, Caroline was back in Henry’s bedchamber, and it was their wedding night. How nervous they had been, terrified that his father’s valet would find them entwined on the floor, or that his mother would return home from the ball and come to tuck her youngest son into bed (he was, after all, her favorite). She felt the same elation, the excitement, the thrilling intimacy of a shared secret.
r />   But she was naïve then. She wasn’t this time around.

  Henry’s hand moved to cover her fingers on her head. The other was still splayed on the wall beside her face. In the darkness she met his gaze. His touch, this time around, was a bit more gentle. Different, but the same.

  “Caroline? Caroline, is that you?”

  William’s voice echoed through the gallery on the other side of the door. Heart in her throat, Caroline ducked beneath Henry’s outstretched arm.

  “Caroline. I heard something that sounded suspiciously like you banging your head against a wall. Are you there? And are you bleeding this time?”

  Henry’s eye went wide. “How did he know?” he hissed.

  Caroline looked up from smoothing her skirts. “It happens more often than I care to admit,” she whispered. “There, the window—tonight you don’t have a choice, you’ll go out that way.”

  He ran a hand over his hair, the other on his hip as he hobbled toward the window. His limp, it seemed, had come back to haunt him.

  He hooked the fingers of both hands into the bottom casement and, with a small grunt, opened the window. Caroline gulped at the sudden rush of cool night air; it prickled against her skin.

  Arms above his head, Henry leaned against the casement; Caroline drew up beside him, the breeze playing at her mussed hair. For a moment they stood at the open window, trying—and failing—to catch their breath. Drops of rain pattered softly on the ground below.

  She didn’t know what to say after an episode like that; heavens, she didn’t know what to feel.

  Henry couldn’t keep his hands off her. That was good.

  He knew what to do with those hands.

  That was better.

  But he was still Henry Lake, and his expert hands did nothing to change the fact that he’d broken her heart ruthlessly, rottenly, a decade ago.

  She should push him out the window, as she’d threatened to do that morning she caught him snooping about William’s house. He deserved it.

  Henry leaned into the open window, hands still above his head. From the corner of her eye she watched the muscles of his arms flex against his coat. Her throat was tight, suddenly, her pulse hard.

  “I don’t know what you want me to call you,” he said, looking down at his shoes. “I want to wish you good night.”

  She swallowed. “Please, Henry.” Please kiss me again. And again, and again. “Please leave me be.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You must.” For both our sakes. He must know as well as she that nothing good could come of intimacies like this.

  That he’d hurt her too badly for her to ever trust him again.

  He dropped his arms. Just before he made to jump, he turned back to her. Taking her neck in the palm of his enormous hand, he pulled her to him and planted a kiss on the crown of her head, just where she’d hit it.

  She closed her eyes against the hot press of tears.

  When she opened them, Henry was gone.

  * * *

  Caroline stepped out into the hall, giving the door one last tug before it reluctantly thwumped into place behind her.

  “Caroline, there you are!” William strode toward her, brow furrowed. “What were you doing in my study?”

  “I, um, got lost?”

  William crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a shoulder against the wall. “Try again. A better lie this time.”

  Caroline cleared her throat. “I was rifling through your papers, stealing your money, and, um, using your secrets to blackmail you. There. Better?”

  William smiled. “Much.”

  “You played your role as host with appalling good grace, dear Brother.”

  “Thank you.” He bowed. “And you were a marvel of a hostess.”

  “Well”—Caroline made to move past him—“to bed, then. It’s exhausting, being a marvel.”

  “Caroline.” He grabbed her by the elbow. “Where is Mr. Lake?”

  She blinked. “Mr. Lake left with Mr. Hope, not a quarter of an hour ago. Didn’t you see him? Or were you too busy fondling Lady Violet?”

  “I wasn’t fondling her.” He appeared regretful as he said this.

  Caroline attempted to pull away. William only pulled her closer. “Careful with him,” he said, softly. “He’s after me, Caroline. And men like Lake are cruel when it comes to getting what they’re after. I don’t mean to question whatever it is he feels for you—”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “But if he can, he’ll use you to get to me. I know he’s tall, and eye patches are all the crack this season, but that dashing exterior hides a hound. And he’s caught my scent.”

  Caroline waved away his words. “That’s a horrid metaphor, first, and second, you’ve nothing to fear, for I wouldn’t let that man touch me with a ten-foot pole.”

  William’s brow shot up. “Is that why your hair looks like that? Because he touched you with a ten-foot pole?”

  Caroline turned to the beveled mirror on the far wall. She started at the woman staring back at her. Pink cheeks, pinker lips, a lopsided lock of hair falling across her forehead. Soft eyes.

  An obviously well-pleasured woman. One who’d been kissed, and kissed quite thoroughly.

  Caroline’s throat tightened all over again. She was embarrassed, yes, that her brother should see her in such a state.

  But more than that she was afraid. Fear gripped her heart, like ice-cold fingers giving that overworked organ a savage twist. The woman staring back at her wasn’t the placid, self-possessed dowager Caroline imagined herself to be. She wasn’t the twenty-nine-year-old woman who had learned her lesson about love, and knew better than to allow it to destroy her again.

  This woman, the one with the traitorous high color, the one who’d agreed to help Henry Lake find the French Blue, was a fool.

  Caroline wrangled her elbow from William’s grasp and, excusing herself, darted up the stairs.

  She sent Nicks away and, closing the bedroom door softly behind her, brought her hands to her face. Her skin burned.

  She did not see the figure separate from shadow until it was too late.

  Fourteen

  Henry paced across the room, each footfall like a clap of thunder. The floorboards shook and moaned beneath his stride.

  Mr. Moon jumped back at a particularly vengeful step.

  “I swear, you’re worse than that black-toothed Genoese opium eater,” Moon said, straightening the vials he’d overturned. “It’s been, what, an hour since you saw her last?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Henry growled, clasping his hands behind his back to keep them from shaking. His lips smarted and stung, alive with the memory of Caroline’s kiss.

  What a fool he was, careless, to succumb to the desire he’d worked so hard to suppress. All those years of sacrifice, of keeping her safe, far from the violence of the life he’d chosen—all that work, dashed in a single instant, by a single touch.

  He shattered everything he touched.

  He had no right to touch her.

  But he couldn’t help it. The desire to see her, touch her, possess her was overwhelming. That kiss, that embrace that was supposed to slake his desire for her, merely stoked it to unbearable heights.

  She’d felt it, too. He’d known she had. He also sensed her frustration, her anger. He understood why she asked him to stay away.

  And yet.

  “For the love of God,” Moon said, “go back to her already! There’s nothing wrong with missing the woman you love—”

  “She’s not my woman. And I am most certainly not in love.”

  How is she feeling, he wondered. How is her head?

  Moon rolled his eyes. “Right. But would you just go back to her, and leave me in peace? You might continue your search for the jewel, too.”

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nbsp; “I’ve searched the house.” Lake turned on Mr. Moon. “And she doesn’t want me to go back to her. She doesn’t want me, period. She said so herself.”

  “And you believe her?” Moon cocked a brow.

  “Of course I believe her!” Lake said. “What else am I supposed to do?”

  Moon smiled. “Call her bluff, and kiss her soundly.”

  Henry placed his palms on the windowsill. He’d kissed her, all right. Soundly, passionately, stupidly.

  “I’m too busy,” Henry said gruffly. “If you’ve forgotten, that bloody diamond is still missing, and Napoleon’s still winning the war. I’ve a rather busy schedule.”

  Moon sighed noisily. “Go see her.”

  “I can’t.”

  “If I may take a moment to applaud my powers of persuasion, sir—have I ever been wrong about members of the female sex?”

  “Yes,” Henry said.

  “You know I’m right.” Moon sighed. “Have it your way, but don’t blame me when you wake up in hell tomorrow morning. If you don’t get some sleep, and soon, you’re going to end up dead. And the only way you’re going to be able to sleep is if you go to her already!”

  Henry growled once more and rolled his eyes and shouted his denials. But as he paced away the minutes, he felt a growing terror at the prospect of spending another sleepless night in this room.

  And so, like any insomniac experiencing a bout of unrequited affection, he got desperate.

  He got stupid.

  He got on his horse, and rode for Hanover Square. He told himself he went to make sure she was all right.

  To make sure she was sleeping soundly, and safe.

  But the burn in his lips, the stretch inside his chest, told a different story.

  Caroline’s window was open, glowing with the light of candles and lamps within. His stomach clenched; she was still awake.

  It was quiet in the narrow lane that ran alongside the house to the mews. Later Henry would recognize it was too quiet, and strange he didn’t hear voices floating down from Caroline’s window.