by Liz Carlyle
A man more at ease sleeping in a tent and living in a pair of filthy riding boots, he found the constraints of London trying, and the prying eyes of society an interminable pain in his arse. But on this particular afternoon the pain had relocated to his head after a night of drunken revelry in the card room. He’d not wanted for company, either—for while the Fraternitas might be sworn to God’s service, not a man amongst them was bound for sainthood.
Admittedly, however, Belkadi’s strong coffee had cleared the cobwebs. And now it was time to get back to the business of vengeance. It was time to call on Quartermaine. He wondered he’d never thought of doing so before now. The keeper of their local gaming establishment was a right royal sharper, but he was wise to the game—in every manner of speaking. A man like that, even young as he was, might well know where some of the old bodies were buried. Certainly he knew people who could uncover a few of them. . . .
That thought served to cheer him considerably, and Lazonby was already whistling his way down the club’s front steps when a black phaeton with ruby red wheels came tooling briskly round the corner into St. James’s Place. It splashed through what was left of the morning’s puddles, then drew up on the cobbles but a few feet away.
The fine-boned, perfectly matched blacks stamped and shook their heads with impatience, but the driver held them easily. “Good afternoon, Rance,” Lady Anisha Stafford called down. “What a pleasant surprise.”
He watched in mild stupefaction as the lady descended, all compact grace and vibrant energy, to toss her reins to the club’s footman, who had come dashing down the stairs to bow and scrape before her.
Lazonby was taken aback to see her, though he shouldn’t have been. While it was true females were not permitted to join the Fraternitas—though an especially determined young lady had recently tried and been shipped off to Brussels with Bessett for her trouble—scientific-minded members of the public were often allowed to use the St. James Society’s reading rooms and libraries.
But more importantly, Lady Anisha’s brother was a founding member of the Society. So, yes, she had every right to be here—no matter how uncomfortable it might make him. No matter how his breath might catch when he looked at her. They were friends, and dear ones at that.
He forced his usual broad, good-humored smile. “Well, well, Nish!” he said, leaning on his brass-knobbed stick. “Fending for yourself now, eh?”
“It’s a hard life.” Lady Anisha smiled, stripping off her driving gloves as she came down the pavement. “Do you like it?”
She meant the carriage, of course. “It’s . . . dashing,” said Lazonby, struggling to keep his jaw from hanging. “I’m just not sure it’s you.”
“Well, perhaps it should be?” the lady murmured cryptically.
Lazonby’s critical eye swept over the conveyance, finding much to admire. It was high, but not perilously so. It was perfectly slung, with front wheels reaching to Lady Anisha’s shoulder and paint that glistened like onyx set with rubies. It was a carriage no young man of fashion would willingly have given up—and one very few ladies would have driven.
“In any case,” Lady Anisha continued, “I’m merely holding on to it, shall we say, for my brother Lucan.”
“Ah,” said the earl knowingly. “Pup’s under the hatches again, eh?”
Lady Anisha’s smile tightened. “Quite so,” she said. “Baccarat this time. But he’s learnt the hard way that if he wishes my help, there’s a price paid. And this time the price is his phaeton. I confess, I’ve come to quite like it. I’m not at all sure he’ll be getting it back.”
Lazonby turned his attention from the phaeton back to the exquisitely beautiful woman. “Have you come to visit the Reverend Mr. Sutherland again?” he asked, curious. “Because he’s still off in the wilds of Essex.”
“Well, he could hardly go all the way to Colchester and not visit his sister, could he?” said Anisha. “But I’ve actually come to fetch Safiyah. I’m going to make her drive in the park with me.”
Lazonby drew back a pace. Safiyah Belkadi, Samir’s sister who helped look after the house, rarely left it. “Well, good luck with that,” he murmured.
“I know.” Anisha screwed up her face. “She’ll likely refuse. What about you? Dare you trust your life to my hands?”
“I can think of few I would trust so readily,” said Lazonby truthfully. “But no, I was just headed across the way to the Quartermaine Club.”
“Rance!” she said chidingly. “You are not gaming again.”
He grinned down at her. “Not at Ned’s, that much is certain,” he said. “He won’t let anyone from the St. James Society sit at his tables.”
“Heavens, I wonder why!” she murmured. “Look, at least ask me up to the bookroom for a moment. I have something I ought to tell you, and I don’t want to stand in the street.”
With a sudden and grave reluctance, Lazonby inclined his head and offered his arm, realizing yet again how exquisite she was. Diminutive and fine-boned, Lady Anisha did not quite reach his shoulder. Her hair was as dark and sleek as a raven’s wing, and a pair of sharply angled eyebrows merely served to accent her delicate features and warm, flawless skin. Onyx eyes seemed to fire with diamonds when she was in a temper, which she often was. In short, Anisha was the most beautiful, most exotic thing he’d ever laid his eyes on.
But he gave voice to none of this. He never did. Instead, he escorted her up the stairs, rattling glibly on as he always did, and about nothing more significant than the weather.
Two minutes later, they were seated on the long leather sofas in the club’s private library, looking at one another a little uncomfortably across the tea table. Lazonby very much hoped Lady Anisha had forgotten the last time she had come upon him in this room.
He had been in a terrible state then, roiling with thwarted rage and something else he would as soon not think about. He had been caught by Nish’s brother in what had been a most compromising position; caught with Jack Coldwater, the hot-headed, red-haired newspaper reporter who had seemingly made it his life’s ambition to ruin Lazonby.
Well, Coldwater, the cheeky little bastard, had turned up rather too late for that. Lazonby had ruined himself long ago.
But regrettably, Nish had been with Ruthveyn that day. He only hoped she had not quite seen . . . well, whatever it was that had been going on. Her brother most certainly had seen—and had given him a fierce dressing-down for it. Not because Ruthveyn was a judgmental sort of man; he wasn’t. No, the scold had been on account of Nish.
He watched her now; her dark eyes flashing, her small, perfect breasts so snugly encased in her black silk carriage dress, her neck long and elegant as a swan’s, and he wished a little forlornly that he had not passed her on so swiftly to Lord Bessett.
Not that Nish was anyone’s to pass on. She was not. But it little mattered. They might have been closer than brothers, linked together for all eternity, but Ruthveyn had made it plain that Lazonby would never be good enough for his sister. And God knew he owed Ruthveyn—owed him his life, practically.
Moreover, he knew in his heart that Ruthveyn was right.
He might worship the ground her tiny, bejeweled slippers trod upon, but Lazonby had lived a life of wickedness and debauchery that at times could shock even him. And having survived that, he had gone on to make revenge his life’s obsession. No, if ever he’d had a chance with Lady Anisha Stafford, he had lost it long ago.
As if to break the awkward moment, Lady Anisha reached up to pull the long pin from her jaunty hat, then set them down beside her. “There,” she said on a sigh. “It was poking me. Now, Rance—you were very bad to abandon me in Whitehall the other day. Whatever were you thinking?”
He jerked to his feet. “I did not abandon you,” he said testily. “I left you my carriage, my coachman, and my footmen—with instructions to convey you safely back to Upper Grosvenor Street. I thought it best I walk home, for I was in a temper and not fit company for a lady.”
Ani
sha watched as some inscrutable emotion passed over Rance’s ruggedly handsome face. So, she had made him angry. She wasn’t sure she cared. They were still friends, yes, but she had grown tired of letting him off so easily.
She had gone with him to Whitehall—practically to Scotland Yard, a place most ladies would sooner die than visit. But she had gone at Rance’s request, and against her better judgment, to request a personal favor of the Assistant Commissioner, a man who seemed to hate Rance with his every fiber but who, rather unhappily, owed Anisha’s elder brother a large favor.
And so she had gone. But Rance—in his usual bullheaded pursuit of a justice he would likely never see—had pressed the man until Napier’s temper had snapped. Little wonder, when Rance had so arrogantly demanded the man reopen his late father’s old investigation into Lord Percy Peveril’s murder. Napier, of course, had refused, maintaining that Rance had been fairly convicted. At which point Rance had stomped out in a furor, cursing the entire Napier family.
“You left me,” she said, following him to the window. “Honestly, Rance, I can’t think what’s got into you these past few months. You are behaving most strangely.”
Lazonby was staring down at the entrance to the Quartermaine Club, watching as Pinkie Ringgold, one of the club’s bullyboys, came out to open the door of a waiting carriage. But eventually, he turned around to face her.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped. His eyes, suddenly bleak, seemed to search her face. “What was it, Nish, you wished to say to me?”
She ignored the little rush of heat that ran down her center and shifted her gaze. “Two things,” she said. “Firstly, what do you know of Royden Napier’s background?”
Lazonby lifted both shoulders. “Not a damned thing, save he’s old Hanging Nick Napier’s get.”
“Lud, Rance, your language!” Anisha rolled her eyes.
But Rance, at heart, would always be a Legionnaire, where only the most hardened of the hard survived. And Hanging Nick Napier had been one of the men who had driven him to it, by sending him to the gallows for a murder he had not committed. Now Napier’s son held not just his father’s old position, but the key to Rance’s revenge—perhaps.
“In any case,” she went on, “Lady Madeleine told me something interesting over dinner last night.”
Lazonby grinned. “Getting awfully cozy with your new mamma-in-law, aren’t you?”
Anisha felt her anger spike. “Just hush, and listen,” she demanded. “A few months ago, when Napier rushed to his uncle’s deathbed—”
“Aye, to Birmingham, someone said,” Lazonby interjected. “Probably some jack-leg silversmith. What of it?”
“Well, it wasn’t Birmingham.” Anisha dropped her voice. “Belkadi misunderstood. It was Burlingame—as in Burlingame Court.”
For a moment, Lazonby stared at her in bewilderment. “To Lord Hepplewood’s?”
“Well, Hepplewood is dead, is he not? Or so Lady Madeleine says.” Anisha tossed her hand dismissively. “I confess, I know nothing of these people. But I think it odd that Napier is nephew to a peer so well connected.”
“Connected, then, on Lady Hepplewood’s side,” Lazonby murmured.
“Lady Madeleine says not,” Anisha countered. “I was wondering if perhaps Napier was illegitimate.”
“No, but old Nick might have been.” Then Lazonby shrugged again. “But I don’t give two shillings for Napier’s family. I just want him to get off his arse and do his job.”
He wanted Napier to clear his name—but to do so, Napier would have to discredit his father’s last, most prominent, case. So they were going to see, Anisha thought, just what Royden Napier was made of . . .
She drew a deep breath. “Which brings me to my second point,” she continued.
“What?”
For an instant, Anisha snared her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’ve convinced Napier to let me look at the files in the Peveril case,” she finally said.
“You what?” He looked at her incredulously.
“He’s going to let me see the files,” she repeated. “I can’t take them from his office, of course. But they are a matter of public record—well, sort of—so he’s going to let me see them. His father’s notes. The witness statements. That sort of thing. So . . . what do you want to know?”
Rance could not take his eyes off her. “I . . . good Lord . . . everything,” he managed. “Everything you can learn. But how . . . ?”
Anisha cut her gaze away. “Vinegar and honey, Rance,” she murmured. “You know the old saying. I think you’d best let me deal with Napier from here out—especially since you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head.”
Rance closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “Thank you, Nish,” he whispered. “I don’t know what you did, but . . . thank you.”
She waited for a heartbeat—and yet it was a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity. Beyond the open window, Anisha could hear the carriages rattling over the cobbles and the doves cooing on the eaves. And when Rance opened his eyes, she could only stare at him; at his world-weary gaze that so often seemed to drill down into the heart and soul of her, stealing her breath away.
“You are welcome,” she somehow managed.
And in that one surreal moment by the open window, he set his warm, long-fingered hands on her shoulders and drew her slowly, inexorably, to his chest. She came against him on a breathless gasp, and their lips met.
He kissed her gently at first, slanting his mouth over hers as his nostrils flared wide. And she responded; responded as she so often fantasized, by kissing him back, then opening beneath him. Inviting him. Tempting him. And in answer, Rance deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue into her mouth, and the thread of lust that ran through her turned to a raging, twisting river of need, threatening to wash away Anisha’s restraint.
This—oh, yes, this was her fantasy . . .
Then abruptly, almost ruthlessly, the fantasy ended.
Rance tore his mouth from hers and set her away. His breathing was rough, his eyes wild, and beneath the fine worsted of his trousers she could see the hard outline of his arousal. A rather impressive arousal, to be blunt.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped, letting his hands fall. “Good Lord, Nish. Forgive me.”
She let her hands drop and stepped away, suddenly infuriated with herself. But in that instant, she caught a hint of motion from one corner of her eye. She glanced at the door, alarmed.
Nothing.
Relief surged—along with a flash of guilt.
Suddenly Rance reached for her. “Wait,” he rasped.
“No,” said Anisha quietly, stepping back another pace. Strangely, a calm certainty was settling over her. “I’m not waiting. This thing between us . . . it won’t ever be, will it, Rance?”
He shook his head. “No,” he agreed. “I could make love to you, Nish. I could. I . . . I want to. But Ruthveyn would kill me. And Bessett—good God, what am I thinking?”
At last she lifted her eyes to his, her face flaming. “A better question might be, what am I thinking?”
“You should marry him, Nish,” said Lazonby. “He’s a good man. He’ll give you an old, honorable, untarnished name—something I could never do. And he’ll be an extraordinary father to your boys. You should marry him.”
“Yes,” she said, her hands fisting at her sides. “I should.”
“And will you?” he rasped. “Will you do it? I hope you will.”
She could not hold his gaze. “Perhaps,” she finally said. “If he asks me—and he has not—then yes, for the boys’ sake, perhaps I shall.”
Rance heaved a sigh of obvious relief. “Good,” he said. “You will never regret it.”
She pinned him with her stare, determined, finally, to get an answer to at least one of her questions. “And you will never regret it, either,” she said, “will you?”
He thinned his lips and looked away. “You do not love me, Nish,” he said quietly.
A long, expectant moment hung over the
m. Then, “No, I do not,” she finally said, her voice surprisingly strong. “I occasionally desire you, Rance. You are . . . well, the sort of man who brings out the worst in a woman, I suppose. Or perhaps it’s the best. But no, I do not love you.”
The arrogant devil looked at her as if taken aback.
“Is there anything else, then?” she asked coolly. “Before I go back to Whitehall? I don’t know how many trips I can make before Napier’s patience gives out.”
Rance’s face seemed to flame with heat. But he was, as ever, perfectly shameless.
“Yes,” he finally said. “There is one particular thing.” He went to the small desk near the door and extracted a piece of the club’s stationery. Impatiently, he scratched a name on it and handed it to her.
“John Coldwater.” She flicked an irritated glance up at him.
“Or Jack,” Rance rasped. “Jack Coldwater.”
In an instant, her heart was in her throat. The scene from that awful day came hurtling back. “I know who he is.”
“Or any name in the file that might be loosely connected to a person named Coldwater.”
“And how am I to know that?” she snapped.
“That’s why I was headed over to Ned Quartermaine’s,” Rance replied. “I’m going to hire one of his informant thugs to dig the chap out. Find out where he came from, and who his family is.”
“Why?” Anisha felt her lips thin with disapproval. “I should have thought you’d learnt your lesson on that score.”
Somehow, she resisted the urge to hurl the slip of paper back in his face. She wondered yet again just what he and Coldwater had been doing that fateful day when she and Raju had stumbled upon them together. It had looked very . . . physical. And very angry, as if thwarted rage and frustration and yes, even something akin to lust, perhaps, had driven Rance to the edge of madness.
But anger was a complex emotion, and men—well, Anisha could not claim to understand what drove them. And really, Rance’s emotions were his own problem. She had begun to grow weary of worrying about him.
