Irresistible

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  There were already upward of a dozen couples dancing around inside the large rotunda as they entered their booth, and many more visitors were strolling the grounds, greeting those of their acquaintance whom they encountered and in general enjoying the weather, which this evening was particularly fine. Mr. Whetton, a slender gentleman of twenty-three who was paying serious court to Beth’s friend Mary Ivington, was the host of the entertainment, and he immediately offered refreshments as they exclaimed over the festive appearance of the boxes. As this was declined, Beth and Miss Ivington clamored to be taken to see the swans in the ornamental pond. Mr. Whetton and his friend Lord Gaines gallantly obliged them. Claire did not feel obliged to accompany Beth—Mr. Whetton and Lord Gaines were both the most gentlemanly of men—and sat back in the booth, enjoying the promenade of fashionable and less than fashionable attire that passed before her and listening with half an ear to the others playfully squabble over the virtues of dancing versus strolling the grounds.

  Claire was watching the parade of people passing in front of the booth and listening to the music quite contentedly when a tall man walking along one of the covered alleys toward the booth caught her eye. It was too dark and he was too far away for her to be certain of anything about him except that he had black hair. But something in the way he moved . . .

  “Pray excuse me,” she said, getting to her feet. “But I believe I see a friend.”

  The others nodded, and smiled, and returned immediately to exactly what they had been doing before she spoke. Claire felt her heart speed up as she left the booth, and then her feet were moving faster too as she reached the alley. He was still coming straight toward her, and she was suddenly certain it was Hugh. Her heart seemed to swell with joy, a smile trembled on her lips, and it was all she could do to walk rather than run as she hurried to meet him.

  It was Hugh, looking very much the duke in a well-fitting coat of blue superfine over biscuit-colored trousers, with his cravat tied in some elegant style the name of which she had quite forgotten and his boots gleaming in the candlelight. He smiled at her, and it was all she could do not to pick up her primrose muslin skirts and fly into his arms.

  Conscious of a possible audience, she did not. Instead they met most circumspectly in the middle of the alley, and as she turned her face up to him Hugh smiled down into her eyes.

  Claire realized that she was happier to see him than she had ever been to see anyone in her life.

  “Did you miss me, puss?” he asked as he had once before, taking her hand and raising it to his lips.

  She loved him, she realized, quite desperately. And he was home, and safe, and she was his.

  So why were tears spilling from her eyes?

  Not wanting him to see, she pulled her hand from his and turned away, walking briskly along a crooked path with high hedges for walls that headed off at right angles from the alley.

  “Claire.”

  He was following her, of course. Claire dashed her fingers across her cheeks, hoping to eradicate all signs of her silliness before he could see. After all, what cause had she to weep? None at all.

  The moon slid behind a cloud, and the sounds of the night suddenly multiplied; the breeze turned unexpectedly cold. Claire wrapped her arms around herself and instinctively stopped where she was, glancing around. Just as quick as that, the gardens had turned into a frightening, alien place. She was surrounded by dark shadows that seemed to have grown menacing in the space of a single breath. The hair rose on the back of her neck as something seemed to stir at the far end of the path.

  “Claire.”

  Hugh was behind her, thank goodness. She took a deep, shaken breath, then turned and walked into his arms.

  Instead of closing them around her he caught her upper arms and held her a little away from him, looking down at her with a frown.

  “God in heaven. Are you crying?”

  “No,” Claire said fiercely, although she was. She could feel the wet slide of tears on her cheeks, and would have dashed them away except the blasted man was holding her arms.

  He swore. Then he pulled her against him, holding her close and kissing her wet cheek, her neck, her ear.

  “Don’t cry,” he said in her ear. “I love you. Why are you crying?”

  Claire’s heart began to pound. Her hands had been resting against the front of his coat, flat and passive. Now her arms slid around his neck.

  She sniffed, blinking away the last of the tears, and looked up at him.

  “I love you too. And because.”

  He made a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a laugh, and lifted his head, looking down at her. A smile lurked around the corners of his mouth, but his eyes were grave.

  “Not that again,” he said.

  “All right. Because you’re back. Because I love you.”

  “That’s a reason to cry?” He shook his head in fond incomprehension.

  “Sometimes.” She took a deep steadying breath, and met his gaze. His eyes were black in the moonlight, their expression impossible to read, but the curve of his mouth was tender. “I’m ready to be your mistress. Whenever you like.”

  “Ah,” he said, as if something that had been obscured was now made clear.

  And then she was locked in his embrace and he was kissing her. She kissed him back as if she meant never to stop. When finally he lifted his head, she rested her cheek against his chest for a minute. She could hear the fierce beating of his heart beneath her ear.

  “Claire,” he said, lifting her chin so that he could look down into her face. She leaned against him, too weak with reaction to that kiss to even think about stirring, and let him tilt her face up for his inspection. “I love you. Hell, I want to marry you. I would marry you tomorrow if I could.”

  “But you can’t.” Despair colored her voice, and her thoughts. “There’s David.”

  “Yes, there’s David.” He seemed to hesitate. “Claire, there’s something I need to tell you. Ever since you left France I’ve had people watching over you, and other people investigating just how it was that your carriage came to be attacked. Last night I finally stumbled across the truth.” He briefly told her about Marley and Sophy Towbridge and the rest. “I think David wants you dead. I think he hired someone to kill you.”

  “Why would he do that?” She was both shocked and bewildered. She and David didn’t have a good marriage, but he didn’t hate her—at least, she didn’t think he did. And he had never actually harmed her, although that morning, for a moment, she had been afraid he might. But he hadn’t. Surely he didn’t want her dead.

  “He never liked women very much,” Hugh said, slowly and carefully. “At least, not as anything except toys. I’ve known him since we were boys, remember, although we have never been close, or even what you would call friends. I didn’t think he would ever marry. When you convinced me that he had indeed married you, I was surprised, but you, my dove, are a singular beauty and I assumed David must have changed enough to appreciate you since I had last seen him. But then when you went back to England, I started thinking, and I had someone look into the matter. You had a dowry of twenty thousand pounds, love, and David is deep into dun territory even now. In fact, by the time your carriage was attacked he had lost almost all his money and yours as well. He was padding expenses on my estates and pocketing the difference to get by.”

  “Are you saying David married me for my money?” Claire gasped. The dowry had been a gift from Nick, because, he said, he loved her as if she were his own sister and because he didn’t want anything—such as the scandal he and Gabby had stirred up when the ton thought they were a brother and sister falling in love—to stand in the way of her making the match she wanted. That money had freed her to marry whomever she chose—and she had squandered it by choosing David. But then, she comforted herself, any choice she made then would have been wrong. Hugh had not yet walked into her life.

  Hugh shrugged. “I would say so. He went through that money in less than six months. The
n it’s my opinion that he panicked. He started gambling heavily, betting on the ponies, and losing until he was even deeper in debt than when he married you. I think that was about the time he decided to get rid of you and find himself another female with another large dowry.”

  “Are you sure?” Claire couldn’t believe it.

  Hugh shook his head. “Not completely. If I had any real proof, he’d be sitting in jail at this moment. But I think so. I can’t think of anyone else who would have anything to gain by killing you, can you?”

  “No.” The thought that David might actually have hired those thugs who had attacked her carriage to kill her began to sink in, and cold chills went chasing up and down her spine. “Dear God.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ve been perfectly safe since you left France. I’ve had men watching over your every step. I won’t let anything happen to you, I give you my word. But that brings me to another point: David is desperate. I believe he is desperate enough to have tried to have you killed. If I offered him a large enough sum of money, I think I could induce him to give you a divorce.”

  For a moment Claire simply stared at him without speaking. A divorce. The very idea was so shocking that she didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t get a divorce. No one got divorced. It took a bill of parliament to get a divorce. Her family would be shamed forever. Beth’s prospects in the marriage mart would be totally ruined. And she—she would never again be received anywhere outside the bosom of her family. She would be marked as a loose woman forever.

  But she would have Hugh, legally and forever.

  “A divorce,” she said numbly, unable to believe she was even considering such a thing.

  “I love you,” he said again. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Let David divorce you, and marry me. Or, if you can’t stomach a divorce, run away with me, and I’ll pay David to keep it quiet. I’m a rich man, and a duke, for what it’s worth. I’ll take good care of you, I swear.”

  “Oh, Hugh.” Her voice trembled. Her eyes searched every chiseled feature, caressed every plane and angle of his lean dark face. Then she realized that there was only one choice she could make: She chose Hugh, however she could get him. If she could have Hugh, she would ask for nothing else from God for the rest of her life. His broad shoulders blocked her view of the rest of the garden. She could no longer see past him to make sure they were still alone. But she didn’t care, just at that moment. She was getting ready to cast her cap over the windmill with a vengeance, and she didn’t care if there were a hundred spectators to cheer her on.

  “I love . . .”

  Before she could finish what she was saying, something came swinging out of the darkness to smash hard into the back of Hugh’s head. There was a sickening thump, and he instantly stiffened. Claire barely had time to register what was happening as his eyes widened for an instant before they rolled back in his head and he started to crumple in her arms.

  “Hugh!” Horrified, she tried to support his dead weight even as she opened her mouth to scream. But before so much as a squeak could emerge, something slammed hard into her temple, and the world went black.

  31

  Hugh’s first thought, when he groggily opened his eyes, was that he must have imbibed far too deeply the night before, because he had the mother and father of all hangovers now. His head felt like thousands of tiny hammers were pounding a hole in the back of his skull, he was seeing two and in some cases three of everything, and he was sick to his stomach to boot. The funny thing about it was, he wasn’t, in the ordinary way of things, much of a drinking man anymore. In his salad days, he’d been in his cups about as frequently as he’d been sober, and he’d had the reputation to prove it. But since joining the army he’d stopped drinking almost entirely. Drinking to excess the night before a battle was about the best way he knew of for a man to get his head blown off, and for the first few years after he’d left England there’d been battle after battle after battle.

  Then, seven years ago, they’d recruited him for the intelligence service. He’d been less than willing, at first, because he’d enjoyed what he was doing, and as a young and idealistic officer he’d felt a great weight of responsibility for his men, but they—Hildebrand most particularly—had talked him around with the argument that his country needed him. They’d had a specific assignment for him at the time: They’d wanted to throw him into a cell with a man they were holding on other charges but suspected of being a French agent. Hugh’s job was to pose as a French sympathizer himself, make friends with the man, and get him to confide in him. As an inducement for the other man to trust him, they’d claimed that Hugh had passed military secrets to the enemy, and charged him with treason.

  The ploy had worked. The man, thinking he had found a kindred spirit in Hugh, had talked freely. His job done, Hugh had been removed from the cell, only to discover to his dismay that among some of his fellow soldiers a charge of treason, even when it was dismissed, never really went away. Too proud to defend himself with the truth, he’d defended himself with his pistol and his sword and his fists instead. Still, when Hildebrand had come to him with another offer, Hugh had been all too ready to accept. This time he had stayed in the intelligence service, and had eventually come to realize that it was where he belonged.

  But drinking while working as a spy was even more foolhardy than drinking when getting ready to ride into battle. So how, then, had he come by this head?

  Curse it, where was James? What he needed, and right now too, was James’s special concoction. . . .

  His hands were tied. Hugh registered that as he tried to roll onto his back from his side. At almost the exact instant, he realized that he was lying on a carpet rather than a bed—and someone was standing over him, looking down at him, a pistol held rather loosely in his hand.

  “Awake, are you?” The face swam in and out of focus, but Hugh didn’t need to get a better look at it to know who the speaker was: That blond hair turned into a shining nimbus by the candle that flickered on the night table near the bed was all the identification required.

  “David. What the devil . . . ?”

  “Hullo, Hugh.”

  His ankles were tied too, and his knees. In fact, Hugh discovered as he tried to move, he was trussed like a Christmas goose. His head throbbed, his vision came in and out of focus, and his stomach churned, but Hugh had been in enough tight spots in his life that he had learned how to disregard little things like physical discomfort when necessary to focus on big things—like the threat of imminent death.

  It was the horse. The horse. The thrice-damned horse. Last night he’d been thrown by his horse. It was a warning, as he should have known by now. How could he have let down his guard?

  There was another man standing with his back to the door, Hugh saw, a big burly fellow in an oversized frieze coat and well-worn breeches who was obviously some kind of hired thug. A slouch hat was pulled low over his eyes, and, like David, he was armed with a pistol.

  This was a tight spot, no question about it. As he recognized that he was in mortal danger, Hugh’s thought processes simultaneously sharpened and cooled. He was bound hand and foot, lying on a musty-smelling carpet in a small bedroom that seemed at least vaguely familiar, and David was standing over him with a pistol. Suddenly everything came back to him in a flash: the mad ride back to London; Vauxhall Gardens; the blow to the head; Claire.

  “Where’s Claire?” If he felt a flash of stark fear—and he did—his voice revealed none of it. Knowing David as he did, though, he felt his heart begin to race. David was capable of inflicting pain for pain’s sake, and Claire was vulnerable.

  “You mean my wife? Right behind you.” David made a negligent gesture with his head. Hugh, rolling over clumsily, found her with his eyes. She was crouched in a corner formed by the night table and the wall not far from where he lay, her once elegant coiffure now sadly disordered so that stray locks of black hair trailed over her shoulders and down her back, her hands obviously bound behind her th
ough he couldn’t see the rope. Her knees beneath the soft yellow muslin of her skirt were folded up so tightly against her body that they practically touched her chin, her beautiful thick-lashed golden eyes were red rimmed from the tears she had shed in the garden and huge with fear as they met his—and there was a fresh bruise purpling on her temple. Her lower lip was swollen and split, and a tiny rivulet of blood trickled from one corner of her mouth.

  That kind of injury was the result of a backhand to the face. He’d seen it before; it was, in fact, fairly common among the camp followers who traveled with the army. The females among them came in for rough treatment more often than most of the officers cared to think about.

  “You hit her.” Hugh’s whole body stiffened. His eyes promised murder as they slashed to David’s face. Sheer blind rage coursed through his veins. I’m going to kill you for that, he promised David silently. But he managed to choke back the threat. If ever there was a time to be careful, this was it. “By God, you bastard, you hit her. What kind of man hits a woman?”

  “As ever, cousin, you’re a gallant champion for the world’s whores.” David strolled over to him again, careful this time not to get too close. “I’m sure they appreciate it, but it makes you look rather a fool. I suppose it’s because your mother was one. It’s a pity my uncle the duke didn’t find out what she was before he married her. We all would have been spared much.”