by Liz Carlyle
Rance cleared his throat a little awkwardly. “Coldwater is dogging me for a reason, Nish,” he answered. “This is more than the Chronicle looking for a story, because I’m old news now. No, this is personal.”
“Personal.” Anisha crammed the piece of paper into her pocket. “I’ll tell you what I think, Rance. I think your obsession with Jack Coldwater is personal.”
“Do you?” he asked a little snidely.
“Yes,” she snapped. “And very, very unwise.”
For an instant, he hesitated, his jaw hardening ruthlessly. And for a moment Anisha was perfectly certain he meant to kiss her again—and that this time he would not be so gentle. That this time, he would not stop until she begged, and perhaps not even then . . .
The thought sent lust twisting through her again, hot and liquid.
In the end, however, he did not kiss her at all.
“You will pardon me,” he finally managed, his voice tight. “I am wanted elsewhere.”
Then Rance turned on one heel and stalked out the door, leaving her alone in the bookroom.
Slamming the door shut behind him, Lazonby strode out, blinded by anger and a churning, thwarted lust he’d too long suppressed. By God, he wanted, suddenly, to kiss Anisha Stafford until she shut the hell up and surrendered to him—surrendered what she must surely know by now he wanted.
What he had always wanted.
So blindsided was he by this notion that he bumped squarely into Lord Bessett, who stood just a few paces down the corridor, one shoulder set to the passageway wall, his fingers pinching hard at the bridge of his nose, as if he was holding back some powerful emotion.
“Christ Jesus!” Lazonby uttered, throwing up his arms. “Where did you—?”
Too late he realized Bessett had laid a finger to his lips. “For pity’s sake, Rance,” he managed, his voice choked with either rage or laughter, “get the hinges on that damned door sanded if you mean to keep kissing people you oughtn’t behind it.”
“You!” said Lazonby again, hands fisting at his sides. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“It appears I might ask you the same thing, old chap,” he managed. “But me—well, I’ve just come by to pull an iron out of the fire. Higgenthorpe said I might catch Nish here.”
“An iron out of the fire?”
“Aye,” said Bessett, eyes dancing with mirth, “though frankly, old chap, it looked rather as if you were doing the job for me.”
Lazonby was struck by a wave of pure nausea.
God. Oh, dear God.
He opened his mouth. Unfortunately, the abject apology the situation demanded seemed stuck in his throat and came out as a sort of guttural, choking sound.
But Bessett’s mirth was shifting slowly to exasperation. “You had only to claim your interest in the lady, Rance,” he said, his voice low but chiding. “I asked you, you know, before I left for Brussels. I gave you every opportunity.”
“But I haven’t—I don’t—”
Lazonby paused to swallow hard, clawing through his mind for the right words. The words to undo a thousand small regrets. To salvage his friendship with Bessett and give Anisha the happy life she deserved—with a decent man who possessed the wealth, polish, and character she deserved.
“It was a moment of madness,” he finally snapped. “Just lost my head and forced her to kiss me. I am not interested.”
But this, oddly, did not seem to be what Bessett wished to hear.
“Oh, you’d bloody well better be interested, old boy.” Bessett’s countenance was darkening. “There is a word for a gentleman who toys with a lady’s affections, and the word . . . well, it is not gentleman. It is cad. And I ought to slap a glove in your face for it, by God.”
Lazonby drew back as if Bessett had, in fact, done so. “I beg your pardon,” he said softly. “Aye, you have every right. After all, Nish is . . . why, she is all but your affianced wife.”
But now the color seemed to be draining from Lord Bessett’s face. The groom-to-be cleared his throat yet said nothing. The painful vision of Nish and Bessett standing before a padre stopped worming around in Lazonby’s head, and a cold sense of dread began to steel over him.
“Geoff . . . ?” He dragged the word out, giving Bessett every chance to interrupt. “That kiss was entirely my fault. Call me out. Pink me good and proper; I won’t so much as flinch. But Anisha is practically your affianced wife. She deserves . . . well, someone like you.”
The muscles of Bessett’s throat worked up and down. “I did ask Ruthveyn if I might court her, it’s true,” he finally murmured.
“Oh, you did better than that!” Lazonby glowered. “Your mamma’s been squiring her all over town, Geoff, puffed out like a mother hen and laying hints like eggs. People are talking.”
But Bessett just stood there, turning his hat round and round by its brim.
“So—?” Lazonby finally prompted.
The hat stilled. The air, in fact, seemed to still. “So things have changed,” Bessett said after a long moment had passed.
Lazonby’s senses leapt to full alert. “What sort of things—?”
“Things.” Bessett’s voice was low but strained. “My affections. They are—they have become—otherwise engaged.” Bessett moved as if to push past Lazonby. “Look, just get out of my way, Rance. I came to talk to Lady Anisha. You can go to hell.”
“Otherwise engaged?”
Lazonby seized Bessett’s lapel and yanked him back, an incomprehensible mix of rage and relief exploding inside his head. “What the devil does that—oh, wait!—I see how the wind blows! You practically pledged your troth to Anisha, then went ripping off to Brussels with that black-haired Tuscan wench, and suddenly your head is turned? And you have the bollocks to call me cad?”
“Miss de Rohan.” Jerking from his grasp, Bessett flung the hat aside. “Her name is Miss de Rohan, which you should well know, having sponsored her here in one of your mad, drunken whims. And she is not a wench. Nor is she Tuscan, precisely. But she is a lady—one whom you, Rance, insult at your peril.”
“Peril? I’ll give you peril, you mewling whelp.” Lazonby rolled onto the balls of his feet. “You dare to throw God’s gift over as if she’s nothing? As if she has no feelings? And for what—? For Anaïs de Rohan? That ax-wielding Amazon will never be a fraction of the woman Nish is. Why, I ought to slap a glove in your face, you faithless bastard. But since I am not much of a gentleman, perhaps I’ll just knock your teeth down your throat!”
Bessett shoved up one coat sleeve to come at him, but suddenly the air was punctuated by the sound of slow, solitary applause.
On a low curse, Lazonby turned to see Lady Anisha step from the shadows deep in the passageway.
“Oh, bravo!” she said, strolling languidly toward them, still clapping. “That, gentlemen, was a most worthy performance.”
“Lady Anisha.” Flushing profusely, Bessett bowed. “I do beg your pardon.”
Lazonby could only wonder, speechless, if there was any way this dreadful day might worsen. But when Anisha finally reached them, her black eyes shooting even blacker fire, and looking so like her demon of a brother it made him shudder, Lazonby began to wonder instead just how fast he could run.
Anisha’s gaze swiveled from Bessett to flick almost disdainfully up and down Lazonby’s length. “I cannot say which one of you pays me the greater insult,” she said musingly. “You, Geoffrey, for assuming I wished to court you and then trying desperately to foist me off on someone else. Or you, Rance, for trying to force Geoff’s hand merely to spare yourself . . . well, whatever it is you wished to spare.”
“But Nish—” they said as one.
“Oh, do hush, the both of you!” Anisha’s temper fairly crackled in the passageway. “Lord Bessett, I am eight-and-twenty years of age, long widowed, financially comfortable, and—if I do say so myself—reasonably lovely. Though my blood isn’t quite what some might wish, I have no doubt that I can find myself a husband somewhere—if
and when I wish one.”
Bessett had lost the rest of his color. “Why, without a dou—”
“If and when,” she repeated, cutting him off. “But it occurs to me now, sir, that only a coward approaches a widow’s brother behind her back. Had you any real affection for me, you would have sought me out, declared your intent, and kissed me passionately. Perhaps even invited me to your bed so that you might, shall we say, demonstrate precisely what you had to offer?”
Bessett had gone rigid as a beanpole. “Really, Anisha—!”
“Good Lord,” Lazonby murmured.
“But you did none of that, did you?” Anisha pressed on. “You let your friendship with my brother override any passion you might have felt for me. And that, sir, is no sort of passion at all.”
“She’s right,” said Lazonby aside. “It was badly done.”
“And you!” Anisha whirled on him, eyes rekindling with fury. “You are a bigger coward, even, than Bessett. Bessett is merely passionless—at least where I am concerned. But you, sir—you are gutless.”
“The devil!” Lazonby felt oddly wounded. “I—why, I would walk over hot coals for you, Nish! You know I would.”
“That, sir, is not where I wished you to walk.” Her arms were crossed now, one toe tapping impatiently upon the carpet. “Do you know, Rance, I used to fantasize about inviting you to my bed. I yearned for it, in fact, fool that I was—even knowing as I do what a single-minded scoundrel you are. But I am now exceedingly glad I never gave in to that idiotic inclination. I daresay you would do nothing but disappoint—just as you have done today.”
Rance could only stare at her, gape-mouthed.
Bessett, however, cleared his throat and stepped boldly forward. “You are right, Anisha,” he said quietly. “I esteem you greatly—adore you, actually. And you are quite likely the loveliest woman I’ve ever known. But I’ve never felt much more than a passing interest in you—or, quite honestly—in any other woman.”
“Flatterer,” said Lazonby snidely.
Anisha ignored the aside. “And now—?” she asked, waving one hand expansively.
“And now . . . it’s different,” said Bessett, looking perplexed. “I met the woman for me, and I did not hesitate an instant. I did not ask anyone’s permission. Not even hers. Not even, sadly, her father’s—a circumstance I now mean to rectify, with your blessing.”
Anisha’s toe stopped tapping. “Good, Geoffrey,” she said softly. “That’s very, very good. And may she lead you a merry dance. She will, I daresay. You look utterly besotted.”
“Well.” Bessett, always a little high in the instep, cleared his throat and snatched up his hat. “Well, I daresay she will. But first, ma’am, with your permission—?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, go!” Irritation sketched over Anisha’s face. “You need beg no permission from me, Bessett. I am exceedingly glad to be shed of you. And as I said, you never asked me to court you, and I certainly never meant to ask you. So yes, go make your proposal to this mysterious lady—this Miss de Rohan. I hope she says yes—but not, I trust, until she has made you get down on one knee to blubber and beg like a fool.”
With that, Geoff declared his undying admiration for Anisha, seized her hand to kiss it, then hastened off down the stairs.
Lazonby watched him go from one corner of his eye. “Good Lord,” he said again when the front door thumped shut in the hall below. “That was a bit of a shock.”
“To you, perhaps,” she retorted.
Trying to bestir his charm, Lazonby flashed his most beguiling smile. “Well,” he said softly. “Where does that leave us, old thing?”
“Well, old thing,” Anisha echoed, teeth gritting a little, “I daresay it leaves us just where we’ve always been. Absolutely nowhere.”
Chapter 3
Why, sir, for my part I say the gentleman
had drunk himself out of his five sentences.
William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor
Late that afternoon, Lord Lazonby went home; home to his town house in Belgravia, Samir having left him little choice. Once sequestered in his upstairs suite, he stripped naked, tossed on a worn silk dressing gown, and, after uncorking a fresh bottle, made love to La Fée Verte for the rest of the night.
It was a bad habit; one of many that had followed him home from the French army. It was also a dreadful error, given his state of mind. Rage, frustration, and, yes, even lust were always magnified by absinthe. And as he sat alone opposite the cold hearth watching, almost rapt, as the water trickled through the sugar and silver, down into the green void below, he thought of Anisha, and wondered.
Was he a coward?
Well, he was afraid—which was the very definition of a coward, he supposed.
He thought again of how she’d looked this afternoon, so elegant and so beautiful and so angry. Nish, whose eyes often held a hint that her favors might be his would he but ask. And her kiss—good Lord. It had been the smallest thing. And yet it had been something else entirely.
He could not let himself think of what that something else might be.
And it would be such folly! Not to mention an utter breach of the promise he’d sworn her brother. Yet he considered her again and wondered what sort of red-blooded man would not want her to the exclusion of anything else in life, even honor. His duty to Ruthveyn, his hatred of Coldwater, the revenge he so desperately sought—all of it should have paled by comparison to that one simple kiss.
It almost did.
It would, if he let it.
And that, perhaps, was the most frightening thing of all.
Always, always there had been that ethereal something between him and Anisha. And he had known enough lovers to recognize that sidelong, simmering look a woman gave a man when she was sizing him up, so to speak. A few ladies of the ton had even found Lazonby’s rough edges and bad name intriguing enough to invite him to their beds—but never, of course, to their dinner parties.
Anisha, however, genuinely liked him—or had until today. But he was not free to love her, were he even capable of it.
Oh, he wasn’t imprisoned, precisely, nor likely to be. The reach of the Fraternitas in Britain had once again grown too strong—and, under Ruthveyn’s deft hand, too useful to the Crown. Until Lazonby actually did murder someone—today Bessett sprang to mind—and got caught in the act with blood on his hands, then Royden Napier dared not touch him.
Odd how little satisfaction that brought him tonight.
He would never be truly free until his name was cleared and honor restored to his family. To his father. And Coldwater somehow held the key. Yet after better than a year of dogged pursuit, Lazonby was no closer to that goal than the day he’d walked out of Newgate. He was frozen in time. Shackled by his own hatred. He could move neither forward nor backward with his life.
He reclined now like some indolent pasha upon a tufted chaise by the window—an almost feminine piece of furniture his estate agent had acquired along with everything else in the house—and felt the lethargy melting deep into his bones.
He could go, he supposed, to Mrs. Farndale’s for the evening, to watch her girls prance and laugh and feign an interest they did not have. But it was hard to take much pleasure in it when a man could sense with his every fiber that the desire was just a bought-and-paid charade. That in truth, such women were as jaded and mired in ennui as he was. It required a lot of alcohol—or a lot of something—to deaden his intuition and take from them a physical pleasure that was hardly pleasure at all.
He rarely ever bothered anymore. He did not bother tonight. Instead, he watched as the sun slanted low across the roofline opposite. Leaning into the glass, he savored the coolness that radiated from it. Up and down in the street below, he could see the bankers and the barristers alighting from their carriages and going up the steps to kiss their children or take a glass of wine with their wives.
Soon, however, the doors and carriages would fall silent. Then, in another hour, the Commons woul
d recess for dinner and a second wave would begin. It was upper-middle-class Britain at its most industrious—which was to say, not very—and Lazonby had no more part in it than he did in his own so-called class.
He had lived too long in a different world, forgotten the comforts and petty follies of an ordinary life, and become more comfortable there than here. He belonged with people more like himself; the self he had become after long years spent, both emotionally and literally, in the desert. He’d been twice imprisoned, and in between those years, he’d steeped himself in blood and debauchery. He did not belong with someone like Anisha—or her two impressionable young children.
So it was easier, then, to simply not think of what might have been and live only with what was. What had to be done. And as he swirled about what was left of the cloudy green liquid in his glass, he forced his attention to the fact that he never had made it to Quartermaine’s.
For a moment he considered dressing and heading back across Westminster for the evening. Though he was no longer the infamous gamester he’d once been—Hanging Nick Napier had cured that habit—Lazonby still felt drawn to the hells. To the elegant atmosphere. The hope and desperation. The faces feverish with excitement, or deathly pale with dread. And then there were the women, so beautifully befeathered and beribboned, and trained to urge a chap on; to encourage him to part with just another sou—for this one, this one, would surely be the charm.
But he did not go. L’heure verte, along with its inevitable languor, was upon him now, and Lazonby could think of nothing save Lady Anisha Stafford. Of the hopelessness of it all.
He drained the glass, his fourth, perhaps, then plucked another lump of sugar from the silver bowl and perched it delicately atop the pierced spoon to begin the process again. He watched the liquid emeralds drip through it to pool like sweet poison in the bell of his glass. Then came the water, and the swirling nebulousness that reminded him of life itself; so sharp and clear one moment, so utterly obscure the next, all its many truths hidden in a milky, celadon haze.
