Desired

by Nicola Cornick

  Rothbury sighed. “Wasn’t that Sir Francis Drake?” he said. “You are several centuries out.”

  “Are none of the stories about you true?” Tess said plaintively.

  “Perhaps,” Rothbury said noncommittally.

  “But you do not have anything to prove,” Tess said. One would not catch Rothbury boasting in his cups of his adventures as a privateer, she thought. There was something so self-contained about him and yet so formidably confident.

  “The story about me winning fifty-thousand pounds and a maharajah’s mistress in a game of chance was true,” Rothbury said, a smile tilting his lips.

  “What happened to the money?” Tess asked.

  “Spent.”

  “And the mistress?”

  His smile deepened. “She preferred someone else.”

  More fool her.

  The thought ambushed Tess, surprised her. Hot on its heels came a second thought: what must it have been like for a man like Rothbury, a virile man, a man who had no doubt known plenty of women in his time, to lose the ability to take sexual pleasure? She felt a sharp pang of regret for him, followed by a very pleasant feeling of relaxation. It was delightful that this was one man she need not worry would try to bed her. She snuggled further down beneath the blankets, matching her emotional comfort to the physical warmth of the fur-lined rugs.

  “I’m hungry,” she said, surprised.

  Rothbury laughed. “You had no breakfast.”

  Tess realised she had not and that her stomach was rumbling. They turned out of the gates and Rothbury pulled the curricle over, jumping down to purchase muffins and buttery crumpets from the baker whose barrow was on the corner. Tess stripped off her gloves. The butter ran between her fingers and she laughingly licked it off, looking up to surprise an expression in Rothbury’s eyes that she could have sworn was desire. For a second she felt afraid as her heat bumped against her ribs and panic dried her throat, but then he smiled.

  “Is that enough,” he said, “or would you care for some milk and cake?”

  “You sound like my nurse,” Tess said, and the patter of fear in her stomach faded away and the day was bright again and the crumpet was warm and the butter salty and it tasted better than anything she had ever eaten before, because of course Rothbury did not desire her. The idea was absurd, and there was absolutely nothing she needed to fear.

  WHITE’S CLUB WAS QUIET, opulent and shockingly reverential. At first the club servant had seemed disinclined to allow Owen entrance because he was not a member, but Owen had explained very courteously that he was there to see Lord Corwen on behalf of the Home Secretary. The servant had considered Owen’s height, breadth and general air of polite danger and had stood aside. He had recognised him as Viscount Rothbury and had known that whilst he was not a member in his own right, preferring Brooks’s Club instead, he was a friend of several most influential members of the nobility. Decidedly it would not be a good idea to throw him out.

  Owen followed the man up the wide wrought-iron stairs to the landing above, along several thickly carpeted corridors and through a heavy wooden door into a room where five men sat at play. The servant approached one and bowed deferentially, bending to murmur a few words in the peer’s ear. Owen waited. He could feel his muscles tense beneath the skin.

  This was for Tess. From the moment she had told him of Corwen’s squalid blackmail he had been determined to make the corrupt peer see the error of his ways. When Tess had told him that morning that she was estranged from her stepchildren, Owen had become doubly determined she should suffer no more shame from Corwen’s malicious tittle-tattle. He had felt Tess’s grief when she had related that she no longer saw Sybil and Julius Darent. It was a small private tragedy but it had hit him in the stomach like a blow. Tess had given up her stepchildren because she was perceived as a bad influence. She did not wish to damage their future. It was a most selfless act from a woman branded as selfish and manipulative.

  Corwen threw down his cards with a bad-tempered slap and rose to his feet. His gaze, more than a little inebriated, rolled over Owen.

  “Who the devil are you?” he demanded, despite the fact that Owen knew the servant had given his name a second earlier. “And what the hell do you mean by interrupting my game?”

  “Careful, Corwen.” One of the other players looked up. He looked like a country squire with a nose as red as the port in his glass and a certain arrogance in his bearing. “Don’t forget he outranks you,” the man said.

  Corwen gave a dismissive snort. “I won’t be outranked by a damned Yankee pirate.”

  “It is not something you have any control over, my lord,” Owen said very politely. “I am and you are.”

  The other man laughed. “Join us in a game, Rothbury?” he asked, gesturing to the table. “I hear you play a fine hand, with all that experience gained in gaming hells around the world.”

  “You flatter me, sir,” Owen said. “Thank you for the invitation but I am merely here to speak to Lord Corwen about his marriage plans.”

  An odd ripple went around the table like the movement of wind through corn. Two of the other players—the third was insensible with drink and nodding over his cards—looked up and then quickly down at the cards in their hands. The squire, inured to the atmosphere either through insensitivity or port, laughed. “Told you that you should have been more discreet, Corwen.”

  Corwen’s eyes darted from his companions back to Owen’s face. “What’s it to you anyway, Rothbury?” he demanded. “Do you have a fancy for Lady Sybil Darent yourself?”

  Owen felt a flash of violence ripple through him. He itched to take the peer by the throat and throttle him with his own cravat. He kept his hands clenched tightly at his side. He could not allow himself to be provoked. Deep within him, buried but not forgotten, was a thread of violence that had haunted his past.

  “My sexual preferences are not for children,” he said coldly. “I am betrothed to Lady Darent and as such I have to tell you that any threats you make against her or her stepchildren are my business and I shall deal with them.” He paused. “Do you understand me, Corwen?”

  “I understand that you are nothing but a fool to betroth yourself to Darent’s widow,” Corwen sneered. “Could you not find yourself anything less shop-soiled, Rothbury? The virtuous ladies all spurn a foreigner?”

  Owen smiled. “Don’t give me further cause to hit you, Corwen,” he said silkily. “I want to do it very much.”

  “You wouldn’t do it here,” Corwen said contemptuously.

  “You mistake,” Owen said. “I’d do it anywhere.” He shifted. “Another word against Lady Darent, Corwen, or against Lady Sybil, and the whole array of your sexual misdemeanours will be paraded before the ton. Lord Sidmouth has quite a file on you, I assure you.”

  Corwen paused, the blood leaching from his face, his eyes narrowed. “All lies,” he hissed.

  Owen shrugged. “Maybe so, maybe not. But who would care when the gossip would be so much more piquant than the truth anyway? Was that not what you said to Lady Darent, Corwen?” He took a step back and saw Corwen’s shoulders slumped with pitiful relief.

  “My lawyers will contact you about the payment of Darent’s debts,” Owen said. “In the meantime remember what I said about Lady Darent and Lady Sybil.” He smiled. “I think that you will find that your estates require your attention, Corwen. For a good, long time.” He nodded to the others. “Gentlemen…”

  The slumbering card player awoke just as Owen was strolling out of the door.

  “Who the devil was that chap?” he heard the man say. “Damned cool hand.”

  Once out in the night air, Owen stopped and took a deep breath, feeling the icy cold sweep away the heated anger from his body. The violence in his blood died away. He had restrained that aggression for his entire life. Violence had dogged his steps since his youth but he had learned the hard way to keep a grip on his temper; only once had he lost that icy control. Once, fatally, in an incident never to be
forgotten, a shame buried deep in his past. He had dishonoured his profession and shamed his family and as a result he would never again fail them.

  He straightened and squared his shoulders. Sometimes it felt as though he spent his whole life atoning for that failure. He had fought for the causes he had held to be just and he had tried to help those who needed saving. He had almost taken a life and he had given his in return, over and over. For a second his thoughts veered back to Joanna Grant, the only woman he had ever loved. He had saved Joanna from her first husband’s cruelty. He had wanted Joanna herself to be his prize. But fate was tricky like that; it did not always give one what one wished for. Owen smiled ruefully in the darkness. Instead of Joanna, fate had sent him Tess, Tess who was in her own way as fascinating as her sister, Tess who also required protection, Tess who for all her courage and her independence was vulnerable and needed him.

  He had started out seeing Teresa Darent as a deceitful jade without an honest bone in her body, a woman who was both sensuously desirable and dangerously cunning. Yet after only two days he was realising that she was so much more than that: complex, passionate for the causes she believed in, loving. He could not deny that he was enjoying the game of bluff and double bluff between them but he was also starting to want much more. He wanted Teresa Darent. He wanted all of her. He needed to strip away the pretence and uncover the woman beneath, to take her, and keep her and know all her secrets. He, the hunter, was falling prey to the very woman he was intent on capturing. And he did not know how the game would end.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TOM BRADSHAW STOOD ON LONDON Bridge and watched the waters of the Thames slide below, black and smooth, shifting light and dark. It was a bad night to be out, a cold night with a haze of snow on the wind. The sky was impenetrably dark.

  There was a cold feeling in Tom’s heart too and the knowledge that matters were not falling out according to his plans. Twice now he had tried to persuade Emma to take him back and twice she had refused him. He knew she was not going to change her mind. The Lady Emma Brooke he had known a bare year before, the girl he had courted, seduced and married was gone. That Emma had been sheltered and spoiled, a product of her class and her upbringing. Lady Emma Bradshaw was a different matter, her character honed by loss and despair; she was stronger, wiser and all the more desirable for it.

  All his life Tom had had success with women and he had never believed for a moment that he could not persuade Emma to come back to him. They had been two of a kind. They had had an attraction, an affinity that bound them together. Emma was the only woman that Tom had genuinely loved—although he had said the words to plenty of other women, he had never meant them. It was for Emma alone that he had returned to England, wanting to take her with him to start a new life.

  It was not to be. Tom leaned his elbows on the stone parapet of the bridge and watched the water tumbling beneath the arches. The cold cut through his thin jacket like a knife. His fortunes had turned. He had always been lucky in the past but not anymore.

  He had suspected at first that it was his half-brother, Garrick, who had been behind the abduction that had seen him on the ship to the Indies. Now he knew better. Garrick Farne was an honest man who might have Tom arrested for attempted murder but would never act against him in an underhand manner. No, Tom’s enemy was more deceitful than that, slippery and dangerous, a threat to all around him. Justin Brooke. Justin had pledged Emma his love and support whilst ruthlessly, secretly, attempting to rid her of her husband.

  Tom’s fist smashed down onto the parapet. He knew that the Brookes had disapproved of him, of course. Oh, they had made the best of their daughter’s marriage in public in order to avoid a scandal but he suspected that from the first they had been plotting to be rid of him. That was understandable, almost forgivable. What he could not forgive was that in the process they had made Emma suffer too, his beautiful Emma, disgraced and cast out, sacrificed to their pride. And now Justin had the hypocrisy to pretend that he loved his sister and wanted to protect her…?.

  Emma was not the only one Justin threatened. Teresa Darent, the only person who had helped Emma and shown her kindness when her family had abandoned her, was in jeopardy too. Tom knew that Justin Brooke would sell out his political principles—and his allies—for the sake of gaining power. Brooke had already gone to Lord Sidmouth and promised names in return for a deal.

  Tom shifted. He was assailed by two very unfamiliar emotions. The first was selflessness and it was the impulse that prompted him to keep Emma safe. No matter that she wanted nothing more to do with him, no matter that she could never be his again, Emma’s future was now more important to Tom than his own.

  The second emotion was guilt.

  Tom had never in his life been troubled by guilt. He had done many bad things but had never regretted them. Now, though, Teresa Darent haunted him. He was obsessed by the terrible thing that he had done to her ten years before. He had been much younger, of course, and he had not realised at the time how serious the repercussions of his actions had been, not until he had heard about Melton’s art exhibition. Tom could of course blame Brokeby—Brokeby had been the ring-leader, the libertine, a man steeped in dissipation. But where Brokeby had led, Tom had followed. He had not known who Tess was at the time, had not even recognised her when he had met her again eight years later. It was not until he had heard some throwaway remark in a coffee shop about Lady Darent and her previous marriages that he had made the connection. The horror of it had filled his thoughts ever since.

  He owed Tess Darent a double debt. And the one thing he would do, besides protecting Emma, was to ensure that those who wanted to bring Lady Darent down, to frame her for their own crimes, would never succeed. The powers ranged against Tom were substantial but he thought he might have one ally. Lord Rothbury was the Home Secretary’s man but he was also Lady Darent’s betrothed. And he was an honest man. Tom was sure of it. Rothbury was not deep in the conspiracy and double-dealing that reached as high as the Home Secretary himself.

  Tom drove his cold hands into the pockets of his jacket and started to walk back towards the docks, the place he had come from as a child, the warren of backstreets and rookeries that was his home. He had work to do. He would write to Rothbury—anonymously, of course—and warn him to keep Lady Darent safe. It would go a small way to repaying his debt to her and easing the guilt.

  “MY LADY!”

  “Don’t tell me.” Tess rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. “Lord Rothbury is here to disturb my sleep again.” She yawned, forcing her eyes open a crack. “Pray tell him to leave me in peace.”

  “His lordship requests the pleasure of your company on a trip to see the Tower menagerie, my lady,” Margery said. “I have lovely hot water here for you,” she added coaxingly. “And the fire is already lit and the room is warm.”

  “The Tower menagerie?” Tess grumbled, sliding further beneath the covers. “I do not like animals.”

  “Yes, you do, my lady,” Margery, literal as ever, corrected her. She was already warming Tess’s petticoats before the fire. “Do you remember the time you bought that kitten in the market from the man who had it in a cage, and the bird that flew into the window and you fed it milk?”

  Tess gave a sharp sigh. There was no chance of sleep now, not with Margery’s chatter dragging her awake. “I dislike seeing animals in captivity,” she corrected. “That sad leopard at the Tower… One cannot blame it for moulting, trapped in this climate.” She slid out of bed, wincing at the cold that wrapped about her and set her shivering.

  “I really do not know why I am doing this,” she muttered.

  “It’s because you like Lord Rothbury, my lady.” Margery was unanswerable in this mood. “Admit it. You know you do.”

  “It is a marriage of convenience,” Tess said shortly, “though what is convenient about being dragged from one’s bed under cover of darkness is anyone’s guess.”

  Nevertheless she was shocked by the pleasure she fe
lt when she descended to the drawing room—they were so early that no one else but the servants were awake this time—and found Rothbury waiting for her. He was standing by the window looking out on the snow that was tumbling from a sky as lumpy and grey as an old mattress. The room looked dull and dark but when he turned and smiled at her, Tess felt a happiness so acute that for a moment it robbed her of speech. She could feel a smile starting and turned it into a severe look.

  “My lord—here again? And so early?”

  Rothbury’s answering smile rocked her heart. “I wanted to see you again,” he said easily.

  “Why?” Tess asked bluntly. Such frankness was not her usual style. She wondered if his candour was contagious.

  “Why not?” He looked puzzled. “I enjoy your company too much to waste the day spending it without you.”

  I enjoy your company…

  Tess could feel a tide of colour flooding her face. It was such a simple statement to make her feel so flustered. She had thought her town bronze burnished to the highest polish. It was extremely disconcerting that Rothbury could agitate her like this. And when he did she was in danger of forgetting everything; forgetting that he was the man who could ruin her, forgetting that she had set out to use him, forgetting everything in the sweet pleasure of knowing him better each day.

  “I really do not like the animals in the Tower menagerie,” she said quickly, seeking to hide her confusion. “It feels unnatural to keep them locked up as well as downright cruel to expect an exotic beast to endure our British winters.”

  “What a soft heart you have under that brittle exterior.” Rothbury had come forwards and taken her hand now. He was rubbing his thumb gently over the back of it, which did nothing to quell the turmoil inside her. “Who would have thought it? Your timekeeping is improving,” he added, glancing at the clock. “I arrived earlier today expecting a long wait, but you only took three-quarters of an hour this time. Not,” he added, with an appraising glance that made her feel a little breathless, “that you are not well worth waiting for.”