The Undercover Scoundrel

by Jessica Peterson

“How long have you known?”

  Moon drew a breath and looked up from the pistol. “Oh, forever, I suppose.”

  Henry bit back a smile. “Do you know why I walk with a limp?”

  “Officially? Because you saved Mr. Hope from a falling mainmast.” Moon lowered his voice. “Unofficially? Her ladyship the dowager countess.”

  “She prefers Caroline.”

  Now it was Moon’s turn to smile. “I know.”

  “Of course you do.”

  From across the field came a shout. Henry and Mr. Moon looked up; the earl was ready.

  “Moon,” Henry murmured, “I’ve left instructions on the bureau. You’re to look after her—find the jewel and trade it to Woodstock—”

  “Stop it, sir. Just stop it. I’ll have you know I would sell my soul to the devil so that you might win.”

  Henry laughed, heart rising. “Let’s hope the devil does not disappoint us.”

  “He rarely does.” Moon held out the pistol. “I’d wish you luck, sir, but with the devil on our side, I think we both know we won’t need it.”

  Henry took the pistol. “Thank you,” he said.

  He continued his walk across the field alone. Harclay strode purposefully toward him from the other end of the field. His eyes were like black beads, flat, serious, immune to the potent light slicing through the trees.

  Henry’s heart began to pound.

  Of course he had a plan of last resort. But like all plans of last resort, it was tricky and terrible and not at all what he wanted to do.

  Think, he told himself with every step he took. Think.

  He realized his steps were even. The limp was gone. For now, at least.

  Henry met the earl in the middle of the field. Was it stupid to hope the earl’s face would break into a smile, that he would embrace Henry and tell him to go forth and make Caroline happy?

  Yes, Henry mused, taking in the earl’s rageful expression. Definitely stupid.

  “I am sorry to have offended you,” Henry said. “But I love your sister. I care only for her happiness, her honor.”

  The earl looked as if he were about to spit. “Caroline deserves better, and you know it.”

  Avery was calling out to them then, the duel’s first commands. Henry turned, his back to the earl’s. He bent his arm, bringing the heel of the gun to his shoulder. The knot in his belly tightened.

  “Count paces!” Avery cried, and Henry took the first of his twenty steps.

  Think. Think. Think.

  Oh God, he thought at step thirteen. I’m going to have to resort to my plan of last . . . er, resort.

  For a moment he felt as if he were going to be sick.

  But this was not the first time Henry thought he was going to die. And so he did what he always did when faced with certain death: he squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath and willed the fear that cluttered his mind to sod off.

  Eighteen, nineteen, and then twenty paces.

  Think.

  Henry turned and raised his pistol. He narrowed his eye, aimed wide.

  He pulled the trigger at the same moment Lady Violet stumbled into the line of fire, her admonitions to stop, for the love of God, stop, lost in the rising rush of Henry’s panic.

  Thirty-two

  Caroline watched in horror from the far side of the field as the bullet met with Violet’s belly. Her forward momentum drew to a sudden, sickening halt, and for a moment she stumbled on her feet, arms flung over her head.

  And then she was falling backward, all color draining from her face, features squeezed into a grimace of pain.

  Half a heartbeat later a dull thwack sounded behind Caroline; she turned to see a raw hole burrowed into the trunk of a nearby tree. She looked across the field.

  Henry was looking at her.

  His bullet. It had hit a tree.

  He’d aimed wide. Very wide.

  Caroline didn’t have time to think about what that meant. She joined the rush on Violet, sprinting beside the surgeon as he lugged his valise across the field.

  By the time they reached her, William was already on his knees, holding her against him. Even as he shouted orders and obscenities, he wept, tears plummeting one after the other to the ground like fat raindrops.

  A seeping flower of red grew on the bodice of Lady Violet’s gown. She was pale, her lips an unnatural shade of purple; her body was limp in William’s arms.

  Fear, a violent rush of it, moved through Caroline. If Henry’s bullet hit a tree, that meant the shell lodged in Violet’s ribs came from William’s pistol.

  Oh God, she thought. Oh my God.

  William’s shot Violet.

  Someone’s hands were on Caroline’s shoulders, turning her toward him. She looked up into Henry’s face, heard his voice as he said her name.

  “Caroline,” he said. “Caroline, stay here, please, I’ll be back directly.”

  He moved her aside, gently, and then bent to pull William away from Violet. William stood, wiping his face with the heel of his hand as he watched the surgeon kneel beside her.

  “Is she going to be all right?” he asked. “Is she going to live?”

  Caroline wanted to reach for him, to take him in her arms and hold him until the shaking stopped. But he would only push her away. There would be no consoling him; there would be no consoling anyone who’d shot the woman he loved, perhaps fatally.

  The surgeon was calling for William; he returned to Violet’s side, and helped administer some sort of potion the surgeon proffered in a glass vial.

  “Might I help?” Caroline asked. “I can hold back her hair, or . . . or go and get more help, another surgeon?”

  The surgeon waved her away. “Stand back, please, she needs the air.”

  William was apologizing now, telling Violet that it was going to be all right, that he would make everything all right.

  She did not respond; not until her eyes fluttered open, suddenly, and met with William’s.

  Caroline couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard Violet whisper something.

  I hate you, she said. William, I love you.

  Caroline’s eyes blurred with tears.

  * * *

  Violet was still alive a few hours later, barely. William had decamped to her family’s Grosvenor Square house; he’d come home to change his shirt and cast up his accounts before returning to her bedside, where Caroline imagined his moods alternated between bitter weeping and drunken stupor.

  He’d taken two quarts of their father’s best vintage brandy, and not an hour ago sent a note to Caroline, asking for two more.

  None of them slept. Caroline longed to send for Henry; he’d escorted her home after the duel, holding both her hands in one of his as she stared out the window, hardly daring to breathe.

  When they’d reached Hanover Square, Henry had turned to her. “I’m sorry,” he’d said.

  “I’m sorry, too,” Caroline replied, though she didn’t know what, exactly, she was apologizing for.

  He ran his thumb across the back of her hand, and then he let her go.

  Even now, so many hours later, the skin there still burned with the memory of his touch. She was terrified for Violet, for William. For herself. Surely Woodstock grew impatient, and the diamond was lost, gone forever it seemed. Without the diamond, they had nothing with which to bargain for her life, or the lives of Henry’s men.

  The terror made her feel lonelier than usual. She would bear it, as she must. But that did not mean she didn’t ache for Henry. He would know what to say, how to touch her; he would make her laugh; and he would bring her relief, at least for a little while.

  She wanted him, but she knew she could not have him. Not a day ago, he told her he loved her, and she refused him. She was too frightened to risk her heart again, of reliving the devastation and hurt s
he’d felt after losing him the first time.

  No, Henry was not hers to pine over, or to call upon when she felt lonely. He deserved better than that.

  But like all stations in life, widowhood brought with it certain benefits, particular challenges. Loneliness was one such challenge. The challenge. She’d been lonely for as long as she could remember, but this kind of loneliness was new, and enormous, and eviscerating.

  Thirty-three

  Brook Street, Hanover Square

  That Night

  The light in Caroline’s window dimmed, and then went out altogether.

  Sidled up at his perch beside the wrought iron gate, Henry tossed aside the smooth-edged pebble he’d been rolling between his thumb and forefinger. He let out a sigh.

  Caroline was safe, for one more night, at least.

  And now she was asleep.

  It was late, somewhere between one and two in the morning. He wondered what had kept her up. News about Violet, the French Blue? That dreadful book she’d been reading?

  Henry knew it was foolish to wish he was the one to keep her awake. Why would Caroline waste her time thinking about him?

  Still he wished it. With his whole being, he wished it. Knowing she was thinking about Henry made his own sleeplessness, the incessant winding of his thoughts over and around and about her, less pitiful. Less painful.

  He took one last sweep of Harclay’s property. No sign of Woodstock, thank God. Lake knew he would come to collect what he’d asked for, soon. He prayed he would have the French Blue to give him. Henry and Moon had torn apart London in the twelve or so hours since the duel, searching for it. With increasing panic, Henry realized seeking out the diamond would prove a far more formidable task than he anticipated.

  Digging a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, Henry gritted his teeth against the heaviness in his chest.

  He missed her. He craved her.

  He had to see her, if only to make sure she was all right.

  He turned back to the window.

  * * *

  Her eyes, sticky with grief and sleep, fluttered open at the soft thud that sounded by the window, then fluttered back shut.

  Caroline drew a breath, inhaling a bit of drool along with the air. The carpet felt prickly and hard against her cheek. Her neck hurt, her mouth was unpleasantly dry and thick. He entire body ached; she felt like she’d been beaten from the inside out.

  She didn’t remember falling asleep on the floor.

  There was a quiet rush somewhere above her head, and then she was being lifted into her bed, the ropes groaning in protest as she landed softly on the mattress. She moaned; the bedclothes felt deliciously cool against her skin.

  Again her eyes opened. She could not see much; only an enormous shadow, the otherworldly luminescence of a single pale eye that pierced the darkness like a moon in miniature.

  “Henry,” she whispered.

  He pressed a kiss into her cheek. “Go back to sleep, love,” he said.

  “Stay with me,” she whispered.

  She struggled to keep her eyes open; she was weary with exhaustion. She turned onto her side, eyes closing once more. Above her came the breathy sigh of a sheet, and a moment later it drifted down upon her, its touch light, lingering.

  The mattress dipped; she heard Henry’s boots fall to the floor, quietly. A rustle of bedclothes beside her, the sound of him letting a long breath out through his nose.

  And then he was gathering her to him, curling her body into the warm curve of his own. His arm wrapped about her waist and his nose grazed the back of her neck, breath warm on her skin. She relaxed against him, falling further from consciousness with each beat of his heart against her back.

  She smelled lemon, and laundry, spice.

  She fell asleep.

  * * *

  When she woke, the light streaming through her window was pale gray, soft with the first hint of sun. The air inside the room was already warm; she felt sticky at her temples and about the nape of her neck.

  Caroline opened her eyes, looked across the room.

  Henry was there by the window, leaning against the wall. His shirt was undone, revealing a deep V of skin and freckles and muscle. She’d never seen his chest in the light. So many freckles. She liked them, and wanted to trace their pattern with the tips of her fingers.

  She was awake, suddenly.

  His arms were crossed about his chest and his good leg was bent at the knee, the sole of his stockinged foot pressed to the wall. She recognized this posture from their fateful afternoon stroll through Hyde Park, just before they’d gone for that swim in the Serpentine. With a little thrill, she realized it was one of the many things that made Henry Henry, much like the way he dug his fingers into the hair at the back of his neck, or hooked stray strands behind his ears; like that half smile, the one he used liberally, knowing it laid waste to every female in a fifty-foot vicinity.

  She was beginning to know him all over again.

  In that moment she felt, strangely, as if they’d never been apart. She understood the romance of it, of knowing someone so well, of that someone knowing you.

  She wanted, badly, to get lost in the romance, to allow herself to feel the heady loveliness of all this knowing. She met Henry’s eye. He was looking at her the way he was always looking at her. Softly, with feeling.

  Caroline looked away.

  “How is Lady Violet?” Henry asked. “And your brother?”

  “Not well,” Caroline bit her lip. “And not well.”

  From the corner of her eye, she watched Henry lean forward. “They need your help more than I do, Caroline. Go to William. He needs you, especially if—”

  A beat of uncomfortable silence settled between them. Caroline didn’t want to think about what would happen if Violet died. William would never forgive himself; there was no telling what he’d do.

  Henry was looking at her, face hard, eyes soft, color creeping over his unshaven jaw. The stubble was dark in this light; it matched the purple thumbprint beneath his eye. He was exhausted.

  She ran her tongue over her teeth. She wished she had some water.

  “You aimed wide,” she said. “You were going to let William win. You were going to let him kill you.”

  He returned her gaze steadily. “Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Henry. You’re no martyr. Of course it matters. What about the lives of all those men you’re meant to save? What about the jewel? What about our plot to defeat Woodstock? We couldn’t do any of it without you.”

  “I wasn’t going to kill your brother, no matter how much I wanted to. You love him. Losing him would destroy you, I know it would. And I’ve already destroyed you once. I’m not going to do it again.”

  Swallowing for what felt like the hundredth time, Caroline resisted the impulse to dash across the room and leap into his lap and kiss him until tomorrow.

  He’s not yours, she reminded herself. You refused him; you have your widowhood, and your scalawag brother, and your gardens. You made your choice. You cannot go back now.

  Caroline plucked at a furred thread in the sheet spread out across her lap, watching as she made a big hole out of a tiny one. Henry sat on the edge of the bed; the mattress ducked and jolted as he tugged a boot up his leg. She snuck a glance; the fabric of his shirt stretched across his shoulders. Enormous shoulders.

  “You stayed,” she said after a beat.

  He stilled. “You asked.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come up,” she said.

  His foot fell with a muted clap to the floor. He placed his hands on his thighs, thumbs pointing toward his hips with arms akimbo.

  Hanging his head, Henry said, “Can’t exactly trust a man like Woodstock to keep his word. He’d touch you just to spite me. So I had to see that you were all right up here. Alo
ne.”

  “Besides the usual visit from my lover, he usually comes once a week—”

  Henry’s head shot up.

  “Joking! Just a joke.”

  “Not funny.” Henry turned to look at her. “What do you want me to say, Caroline? That yes, I meant to ensure your safety, but mostly I just wanted to see you? That after the duel I knew I wouldn’t sleep, and I was looking for comfort, and I didn’t know where else to go?” He scoffed. “That man—the man who would say these things—I don’t want you to pity him.”

  I don’t pity him, she wanted to say. I love him.

  I love him.

  But she didn’t say those words. She couldn’t get them past the tightness in her throat, the fear that shot through her.

  Oh, God, she thought. It’s happened, the thing I swore never would. I’m in love with Henry Beaton Lake. Again.

  His gaze was earnest, and lovely. She couldn’t bear it; she looked away. She looked down at his legs.

  “Here,” she said, sliding across the bed. “Let me help you with the other boot. It’s your bad leg, isn’t it?”

  Henry stiffened as Caroline sat beside him. She was aware, suddenly, just how transparent her chemise was. She pulled the neckline up, toward her chin.

  “Does it hurt today?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It was getting better, and then . . . well.”

  “You’ll let me know if I need to stop?”

  Henry dipped his head, a nod. She leaned over him and reached for the boot, its leather stiff, as if it had learned to stand at attention from the solider who wore it.

  Henry set his hands on the mattress behind him. As he lifted his leg he drew a small, short breath through his teeth. Caroline guided the boot over his foot and up his calf. The muscles there were taut, flexing against his plain cotton stockings. She resisted the urge to run her thumb along the ridge between his shin bone and muscle.

  Caroline grasped the top of the boot with both hands and gave it one last tug.

  “There,” she said. “All right?”

  Her hands lingered on the lip of his boot, right below his knee. She shouldn’t be touching him like this; in fact, she should be running for the proverbial hills, to the safety and comfort of her uneventful widowhood.