The Missing Heir

by Ranstrom, Gail

  “The hell you say!”

  “Damn it, Hawthorne. I intend to keep you from murdering the man in a rage. I won’t have you hang for some miserable sot who probably doesn’t even remember who gave him the orders. Promise me you won’t go until tomorrow. You need the time to cool off. Think about what you hope to accomplish, eh?”

  Adam saw the sense in that. He’d never get answers if he killed Taylor. He nodded at Carter. “What time shall I call around for you?”

  “Best if we go by noon. Any sooner, and he won’t be awake. Much later, and he won’t make sense.”

  Sighing deeply, Adam started for the door. “It’s almost over. God, how I long to lay these ghosts to rest.”

  “It’s just beginning,” Carter contradicted. “Whatever forces are at work are formidable.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m pretty damned sure it wasn’t Taylor who sent Clark to stop you. You’ve got another enemy—a powerful one—out there, my friend.”

  A cold anger roiled in Adam’s gut and he heard the faint sound of Indian drums across the distance. That unseen enemy would be the man who ordered the attack, a man with whom he was now engaged in a clandestine war.

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time Adam had cleaned up, shaved and changed his clothes, Grace was waiting in the library. She stood with her back to him, gazing out the window at the square across the street. Her gown was an icy-violet fabric, almost fluid in the way it flowed over her form, and cut with long sleeves but deeply enough in back to reveal smooth ivory skin and the column of her spine. She’d done her hair in its usual chignon, and the contrast between the prim dark knot and the seductive expanse of skin was insanely erotic.

  Contrasts. Grace was a study in contrasts. Could one ever truly know her—all the little twists and turns of mind, her longing for excitement, the cool composure that covered her seething sexuality? God, he’d like nothing better than to devote himself to that task.

  She turned toward him and smiled at his expression. The deep V of the back of her gown was mirrored in the décolletage, where the curve of creamy breasts swelled at the opening. And there, a pale amethyst pendant dropped from a fine gold chain to nestle in that alluring valley.

  “I do not know what to say, Adam,” she murmured, smoothing the fabric of her gown over her hips. “‘Thank you’ will have to suffice until I can repay you. How did you know?”

  Ah, the gown he’d sent payment to La Meilleure Robe for. And worth every penny. He stepped into the room. “I overheard Dianthe speak of it. This past week has been difficult enough without you having to sacrifice your creature comforts.”

  “But how did you… I mean, where did you come by the funds? I thought you were waiting for reinstatement.”

  “Lord Craddock advanced me a sum to tide me over.” He lied without the tiniest twinge of conscience.

  “I shall pray the courts rule on Mr. Forbush’s will soon. I do not like owing friends.”

  Friends? She thought of them as friends? They were about to be much more. “That does you credit, Grace, but is unnecessary. We are family, after all.”

  A satirical smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Such an odd little family, are we not? You, Dianthe and I? Somehow it feels…”

  “Incestuous?” he asked, praying that would not be the way she thought of them.

  She shook her head. “Like a lie. I do not feel like you are…that is, my feelings for you are not that of…”

  Unaware that he’d been holding his breath pending the outcome of her answer, he let it out in a long sigh. Thank God she did not think of him as a nephew, because his feelings for her were nothing like those for an aunt. “If that is how you feel, I shall be glad to allow you to repay me when your funds have been released.”

  “Thank you, Adam.” As she passed him on her way to the door, she came up on her tiptoes and brushed a chaste kiss on his cheek. “You are a very thoughtful man.”

  Adam clenched his teeth. He wanted to seize her and take her on the library floor. How thoughtful was that? Well, if she wanted excitement, he’d give her excitement. “Grace?”

  She turned back to him, her dark eyes wide with the question.

  “I’ve changed my mind.” He went to the small cupboard where his uncle had kept chess and backgammon boards, a deck of cards and dice. He removed the cards and turned back to her. “Let’s bet for your dress.”

  She glanced at the cards and back at him. “You mean, to play a game?”

  He nodded, noting her amusement.

  “But what would you do with a gown, Adam?”

  “Find someone to fit it.”

  She laughed. “If you wish.” She came to the desk and looked at the cards. “High card?”

  He shook his head. “Too easy.” Too quick, actually. “Did you learn piquet last night?”

  “The rudiments. But I am certainly not proficient yet.”

  He motioned toward the chairs before the fireplace with a low tea table between them. “Briscola, then. The rules are simple and it is easy to learn.”

  “Briscola?” Grace frowned. “I have not heard of that game. Are you certain you are not trying to gull me, Adam?”

  He laughed. “I learned it when I was posted at our embassy in Italy.” When she still looked doubtful, he made an offer he knew would entice her. “The first game will be for practice. We won’t score until you feel perfectly comfortable.”

  “Very well,” she said. She poured them a glass of wine from a carafe on the desk while he removed the jokers, eights, nines and tens from the deck before shuffling.

  She sat at the table across from him and listened carefully as he explained the rules. “It’s a simple enough game, Grace, if you just relax and enjoy it.”

  She smiled and shrugged. “It seems simple enough, but I am certain there are subtleties that come with experience.”

  “The same could be said of all games. Would you rather play another?”

  “No, I am quite comfortable under your tutelage,” she said with a slight heightening of color in her cheeks.

  When had they stopped talking about briscola? Adam was fairly certain there was something else going on here. He dealt the hand, placed the remaining deck facedown between them, and turned up the top card. “Trump,” he explained.

  As he guided her through the play, he noted that she was quick to grasp the rules and, at the end, equally quick to master the counting of points. Adam won by a comfortable margin.

  “I think you were being kind,” she said as she shuffled. “But I like this game. May we have another practice game before we play for stakes?”

  Adam nodded. “As many as you like. Practice makes perfect, you know.”

  “One more should do,” she demurred.

  As she dealt their hands, Adam sipped his wine. “And where is the fair Dianthe this evening?”

  “She’s gone with the Thayers to a preview of Vauxhall’s opening. Hortense, Harriett and Dianthe are quite a draw together, and I expect they will not be home much before dawn.”

  He could well imagine Dianthe and her ethereal beauty paired with the Thayer twins and their redheaded hoydenish ways. The evening was bound to cause a headache for Mr. and Mrs. Thayer. Ah, but it was good fortune for him. He’d have a wealth of time to seduce Grace.

  The next game went as quickly as the first, and with the same results, though not by as wide a margin.

  “Well,” Grace said with a deep breath, “shall we play for stakes now?”

  “Yes. But not your gown yet. What else do you have that I might covet?”

  She frowned thoughtfully, completely missing the thrust of his question. He grinned as she said, “I haven’t the foggiest notion. I have already put Mr. Forbush’s personal items aside for you. Perhaps you would…of course! The portraits. They are of your family, after all.”

  A thoughtful wager. “Agreed. And what will you ask of me?”

  That appeared to be even more perplexin
g. Did he have nothing she wanted? He couldn’t blame her. He had precious little left in the world. He removed his gold signet ring with his initial engraved in onyx and placed it on the tea table.

  “Oh, Adam, I couldn’t take something so personal,” she said.

  “Why not? I am prepared to take your dress. Is that not personal? Besides, I don’t intend to lose.”

  She didn’t answer, but gave him an enigmatic smile. “Deal, sir.”

  Ah, she didn’t believe he’d take her dress. A shocking miscalculation. He dealt the cards and turned the first one up. Hearts were trump. He could tell by the little furrows of concentration between her eyes that she was playing in earnest now. He paused long enough to pour her another glass of wine and to refresh his own. He decided to take his time and relish the slow inevitability of what was coming.

  The game, he mused, was rather like a fox hunt. All the little twists and turns, the momentary escapes, were all the more exciting for knowing that the fox would eventually be run to ground. Ah, but this little fox would not be thrown to the pack. No, this little fox was all his.

  He won again. The family portraits were his. Grace smiled and he had a brief twinge of uneasiness. He’d had the definite feeling that she’d wanted him to have them. Had she let him win? She waved one hand in dismissal.

  “What now, sir? Are you ready to play for my dress?”

  Adam shook his head. He left his ring on the table and reached out to run his finger the length of her necklace down to the amethyst nestled between her breasts. A little shiver passed through her and her eyelashes fluttered for a fraction of a second. No words passed between them, but Grace understood. She reached behind her to undo the clasp. When the necklace lay on the table beside the ring, she reached for the deck and began to shuffle.

  “Diamonds,” she pronounced as she turned the trump card up.

  The play was intense but not as intense as Grace’s concentration. Her face, the flicker of her eyes, the hint of a smile, all betrayed her, and he prayed to God that she was not so easy for Morgan to read. He would have to keep an eye on that. When he reached out to draw from the stock, his hand grazed hers and she grew still, as if she had frozen on the spot. He traced the soft underside of her wrist with his index finger, relishing her heat and the solid thump of her pulse as it pounded against his touch.

  She swallowed hard and glanced up from their hands to meet his gaze. Her lips parted and she seemed about to speak, but she looked down again and slowly slid her hand away from his. He smiled. She was having the first stirrings of understanding. But why did he feel as if he were seducing an innocent? Did Grace make every man feel as if he were the first man?

  She won. “Well done, Grace,” he said as he gathered the cards and shuffled.

  She slipped his ring on her thumb and held her hand out at arm’s length to admire it. “Too big,” she said with a hint of humor. “I think I shall have it melted down and remade into earrings.” She glanced sideways at him, waiting for his reaction.

  What a delicious little tease she was. He stood and removed his jacket and vest, leaving him in shirtsleeves and cravat. He removed the watch from his vest pocket. “My watch against your dress?”

  She shook her head. “I still have my pendant.”

  “My watch against your pendant, then?”

  Grace tapped the table with one finger. “I do not like to take so much from you, Adam.”

  “Let me worry about what I can afford to lose,” he said in a low murmur. “And, as I’ve said before, I do not intend to lose.”

  The damn clock on her desk chimed the hour. He held his breath as she turned toward it, as if just now becoming aware of the passage of time. Would she insist they leave for the gaming hells of St. James Street?

  She sighed as she turned back to him and tilted her head to one side. “D’you think they’ll miss me at Belmonde’s?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “I’ve heard it said that absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

  He smiled. “Shall we test the theory?”

  “I am thinking I shall have to open a gaming establishment of my own.” She looked pensive. “‘Mrs. Forbush’s Club for Gentlemen’ I shall call it.”

  “Careful,” he said, “or some might think it is a different sort of establishment altogether.”

  She gave him a throaty chuckle. “You, Mr. Hawthorne, are quite naughty.”

  He refilled their glasses. “You have no idea, Mrs. Forbush,” he agreed, toasting her as he sat. “To Mrs. Forbush’s Club.”

  He shuffled and dealt the hand, declaring the trump suit, “Spades.”

  Grace fanned her cards and looked at him over the rim. The move was provocative, and he wondered if she’d done it on purpose. This, then, was a part of Grace’s popularity with the gentlemen of the ton. A beautiful, sensual woman with a touch of coquettishness and a plethora of subtlety was every man’s desire, and Adam was responding as any man would. As every man before him had.

  The play took longer this time. Grace was more deliberate and Adam was more cautious. Where the play had been more in jest in the beginning, it had become earnest. They both knew there was more at stake than a pendant. And, in the end, Adam made certain Grace won. She smiled in delight as she pushed the cards into a single pile.

  He stood and walked around behind her. Leaning close, he reached over her shoulder and retrieved the pendant. “Allow me?” he whispered in her ear.

  She nodded.

  He draped the pendant around her neck and fastened the clasp at her nape. The scent of jasmine wafted up to him from a spot behind her ear. He was growing so hard that movement was causing him pain, but he refused to rush this. Grace would have no reason to bolt this time. Starting at the clasp, he smoothed the chain against her skin on both sides, around and downward to the amethyst at the deep V of her neckline. He could feel her heart beating a rapid tattoo and he knew she had barely breathed.

  His hands still resting on the slopes of her breasts, he hovered at her ear and whispered, “Breathe, Grace. I promise it will not hurt.”

  She took a deep, shuddering breath and he straightened, sliding his hands upward again until they cupped her shoulders.

  “Now, Grace?” he asked. “The portraits against your gown?”

  She nodded.

  “My deal,” he reminded, coming around her to sit again. He shuffled, never breaking his gaze from her. Her color rose and she became more flushed than he’d ever seen her. There was something unutterably intimate in their study, an acknowledgment of the fascination between them. Could she have sensed where this was going to end?

  He did not look down until he turned up the trump card. “Hearts,” he said, thinking how prophetic that was.

  “Hearts,” she acknowledged, looking down at the card. She picked her hand up and fanned the cards.

  They played one hand and then another until the deck was gone and the game was over. Adam didn’t have to count his points. He knew he’d won. The stakes had been high enough that he’d counted every card as it was played. He waited until Grace counted hers, then slid his pile across the table for her to count. He wanted her to know, without a doubt, that he’d won.

  When she finished the count, she looked up at him, an unfathomable expression on her face. “Your gown, Mr. Hawthorne. I shall have it cleaned and pressed and delivered to your room tomorrow.”

  He shook his head. “You have my ring and watch, Mrs. Forbush. Debts are payable here and now. I want my gown.”

  A long moment passed while those words sank in, and then Grace’s dark eyes widened. “Are you serious?”

  He nodded once. “A debt’s a debt.” He almost felt sorry for her. But no, he would not go easy on her. She was finally going to pay for all those sleepless nights she had caused him—from the first time he’d seen her portrait to last night in his room upstairs, where even the cool, smooth sheets had abraded his skin, grown sensitive from arousal.

  Standing, Grace moved away fro
m the tea table and stopped before the fireplace in the center of the grouping of chairs. The heat of the fire warmed her back as she turned to face Adam. She’d undressed in front of a man before. But Basil had never looked at her the way Adam was looking at her now. She wanted to run. She wanted to deny the debt or to accuse him of cheating, but she knew he hadn’t. He’d won. Fairly. And she’d give him value for his money.

  He sat back in his chair and lifted his glass of wine, watching her intently. She realized he was savoring his moment of victory, and that this was what he’d wanted and not the dress itself. He’d planned this whole thing, but he could not know that she had much more at risk than the dress.

  The memory of Lord Geoffrey telling her that the excitement of gambling was in the risk rose to her mind. And it must be true. Her excitement was rising alarmingly at this very moment. And some inner demon, some daringly wicked part of her she did not even know, urged her onward.

  She lifted her hands to her bodice. The gown fastened with a hook and eye at the bottom of the V. She drew the moment out, allowing her hands to rest on her breasts, almost like a caress. Only when Adam twitched did she slip them downward to the clasp.

  Once she’d freed the hook, she parted the fabric, revealing an edge of the satin trim of her chemise. She paused, waiting to see if he would stop her, but, of course, he didn’t. The next hook opened easily, and the next. She shrugged one shoulder to free the fabric, then the other. The sleeves were loose enough to allow the fabric to slide down her arms and off. The rest of the gown went with it, gliding over her hips and puddling on the floor around her feet.

  Adam finished his wine in a single gulp and sat forward in his chair.

  She glanced down at herself, trying to see what Adam saw. Her shapeless white chemise, of a semitransparent lawn, came to just above her knees. Fine white silk stockings sheathed her legs, fastening to white ribbon garters beneath the chemise. Her slippers, of an icy violet satin to match her dress, looked out of place in the sea of white.

  He stood slowly and the harsh rasp of his breathing reached her. He sounded as if he could not catch his breath, and she realized that she had done that to him. A sense of her own power made her giddy and reckless. He believed she was worldly and experienced. He would not know the truth about her. Was it possible? Could she fool him?