by Liz Carlyle
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. Nish, who was quite likely the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
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 Bessett.
Not that Nish was anyone’s to pass on. She was not. Not any longer. He somehow sensed it most acutely today.
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.”
“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 stared 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.
He forced himself to turn around and face her. “I’m sorry,” he rasped. “What was it, Nish, you wished to say to me?”
She flicked a quick, appraising glance down his length. “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. “In any case, Lady Madeleine told me something interesting over dinner last night.”
Lazonby grinned. “Getting awfully cozy with your new mamma-in-law, aren’t you?”
Her dark eyes glittered angrily. “Just hush, and listen,” she muttered. “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.” Lady Anisha had dropped her voice. “Belkadi misunderstood. It was Burlingame—as in Burlingame Court.”
For a moment, Lazonby could only stare at her in bewilderment. “To Lord Hepplewood’s?”
“Well, Hepplewood is dead, is he not? Or so Lady Madeleine says.” Lady 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,” Lady 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 name. I just want him to get off his arse and do his job.”
Lady Anisha looked up at him from beneath two fans of long, inky-black lashes. “Which brings me to my second point,” she said, her husky voice suddenly flowing over him.
Lazonby’s mouth went just a little dry. “What?”
“I’ve convinced Royden Napier to let me look at the files in the Peveril case,” she 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 . . . ?”
Nish 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.”
Lazonby closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “Thank you, Nish,” he whispered. “I don’t know what you did, but . . . thank you.”
When he opened his eyes, Lady Anisha was still staring at him, her dark, exquisitely beautiful face a mask of inscrutability, her wide, black-brown eyes deep, unfathomable pools. It was like that sometimes when he looked at her—his breath simply caught. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even lust.
“You are welcome,” she said quietly.
And somehow—in that one surreal moment by the open window, with carriages rattling past and doves cooing from the eaves above—it seemed the simplest, most natural thing on earth to draw Nish into his arms and kiss her.
She came against him on a breathless gasp, and their lips met. He kissed her gently at first, slanting his mouth over hers as he drew in her scent; a dark, exotic mélange of sandalwood and champaca and the sort of pure, unadulterated femininity that could have stirred a dead man’s blood.
Nish kissed him back, rising onto her tiptoes, for her head barely reached his upper chest. He deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue into her mouth, and felt his stomach bottom out and his cock begin to harden. In response, she gave a soft moan that sent a shiver of lust down his spine.
He could want her, he realized.
He could take her to bed this moment and lose himself in her small, sensual body. He could give her extraordinary pleasure, even joy, perhaps. And she could quiet this bone-deep dissatisfaction that seemed forever to churn inside him—at least for a while.
But he could not let himself love her.
He could fuck her. He could use her—oh, splendidly! But she was better than that. Better than he was—by a long, long shot. Lady Anisha Stafford was like a small, exotic jewel—trained by her Rajput womenfolk, if rumor could be believed, in a thousand exquisite ways to please a man—and she deserved someone capable of worshipping that perfection. And that was not he. He’d seen too much. Tasted too much. His palate was deadened with life’s excess.
A little ruthlessly, Lazonby tore his mouth from hers and set her away. His breathing was rough, his body ready and begging for her.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped, letting his hands fall. “Good Lord, Nish. Forgive me.”
She let her gaze drop, and stepped away as if embarrassed. Neither of them saw the shadow that had just passed nearly through the door, and back out again.
Instinctively, he reached out for her. “Wait.”
“No,” she said, and stepped back another pace. “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.”
Her gaze faltered. “Yes. I should.”
“And will you?” he rasped. “Will you do it? I hope you will.”
Again, an uncertain flick of her eyes. “Perhaps,” she finally said. “If he asks me—and he has not—then yes, for the boys’ sake, perhaps I shall.”
Lazonby heaved a sigh of relief, and felt his blood flow back where it belonged. “Good,” he said quietly. “You will never regret it.”
She pinned him with her stare. “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 them. 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.”
He looked at her in some surprise, uncertain what to say.
“Is there anything else, then?” she asked evenly. “Before I go back to Whitehall? I don’t know how many trips I can make before Napier’s patience gives out.”
There was something. Something important. Lazonby felt his face flame with heat. It seemed a dashed bad time to ask Nish for a favor. But he’d long been a desperate man.
“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 to her.
“John Coldwater,” she murmured. Then she flicked an almost irritated glance up at him.
“Or Jack,” Lazonby rasped. “Jack Coldwater.”
“I know who he is.” Her voice was cold.
“Or any name in the file that might be loosely connected to a person named Coldwater.”
“And how am I to know that?” she asked a little tartly.
“That’s why I was headed over to Ned Quartermaine’s,” Lazonby 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?” Lady Anisha’s lips thinned with disapproval. “I should have thought you’d learnt your lesson on that score.”
Lazonby did not dare ask what she meant by that. “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,” Lady Anisha echoed, tucking 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, wondering whether to tell her to go to the devil, or to simply kiss her again to shut her up.
In the end, however, he did neither. He took the coward’s way out. “You will pardon me,” he said, his voice tight. “I am wanted elsewhere.”
Then Lazonby turned on one heel, strode out the door, and turned toward the stairs only to bump squarely into Lord Bessett, who stood just out of earshot, his back set to the passageway wall, his fingers pinching hard at the bridge of his nose.
Lazonby threw up his arms. “Christ Jesus!” he uttered. “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 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.”
By seven o’clock, Maria Vittorio was drawing the heavy velvet draperies in the withdrawing rooms in Wellclose Square, her heels clicking noisily on the wide, polished floorboards. A carpet was needed, she had often complained, but none had been fitted as yet, for Anaïs had shown little interest in choosing one, preferring to leave the rooms much as they had been in her grandmother’s day.
But in her grandmother’s day, these rooms had been filled not with upholstered chairs and long, matching sofas, but with massive desks and stacked drawers, and clerks buzzing about like diligent honeybees; Sofia’s empire, kept close to hand when she had grown too old to leave the house. The truth was, however, that Castelli & Company had outgrown the space long before the old woman’s death. They had simply made do.
And now the rooms were elegant in their near-emptiness; long, massive chambers sparsely furnished and rarely used, for the house was large, and they were but two people. Two people who kept to themselves—who had nothing from which to withdraw—for they entertained no one save family.
Now, however, Maria looked about the wide, high-ceilinged rooms, and wondered with a mother’s heart if yet another change was coming to these rooms, and to this house. Oh, perhaps she was not, strictly speaking, a mother, for God had not blessed her in such a way. But God had blessed her with Nate and Anaïs and Armand and a whole alphabet of other people who needed her.
She was not sure, however, that Anaïs still did—not in the old way, at least, for Anaïs had come home today amidst another flood of trunks and bandboxes an altered person. Altered in a way Maria knew all too well; with a light in her eyes but a sadness in her heart, yet saying little. And always, always, there was a man at the center of such conflicting emotions and subtle silences.
Maria was just drawing the last of the heavy panels when she heard the front knocker drop. Never above answering her own door, Maria set down her drawing rod and did so, swinging it wide to reveal a very tall, slender gentleman in a midnight-blue frock coat and a tall beaver hat that must have cost, if not a king’s ransom, then at least a minor prince’s.
She recognized him at once.
And Anaïs had not, apparently, learned her lesson about handsome, dashing men after all.
“Il bell’uomo,” she muttered under her breath, not in the least surprised.
“Thank you,” said the gentleman, sweeping off his hat. “I’m Geoffrey Archard. Is Miss de Rohan at home?” He presented a thick ivory card, and Maria took it. But the card did not say Geoffrey Archard, she noticed.
“Sì,” said Maria, vaguely impressed. “Come in, my lord.”
Anaïs was in the family parlor sorting through the towering heap of mail that had accumulated in her absence when she sensed a presence in the house. A male presence, she thought, but not Nate. Not Armand. She drew a deep breath, willing her nerves to settle.
She had not long to wait until she heard Maria coming up the old oak staircase with another, heavier tread falling softly behind her. Laying aside the butcher’s bill, Anaïs pushed back her chair, nervously smoothing her hands down the front of her dark blue dimity gown. It was an old, comfortable dress, and far from her best, leaving Anaïs feeling oddly ill-attired—for she knew, as surely as she knew herself, that it was Geoff.
Oh, she had expected he would come, for he was a man who would always do the right thing. But once he had returned to London and to normalcy, what would he think the right thing was?
Certainly she had not imagined he would come so soon. Not the very same day they had parted company at Bishopsgate Station, going their separate ways in hired hackney cabs, with Anaïs snuffling back tears.
And then he was there, his broad shoulders filling the width of the parlor door, carrying his tall hat in his hands, his hard blue eyes somber.
“You have a caller, bella,” said Maria, her eyes dark with warning. “I go now—but not far.”
Geoff tossed his hat onto a chair, and swept her into his arms, kissing her thoroughly and seizing her breath. “Oh, Anaïs, it has been too long,” he murmured, his mouth brushing her ear. “I don’t suppose you could do something about that not far part?”
Anaïs pushed herself back to study his face, finding nothing but honesty there. And for the first time since leaving Brussels, she began to feel a sense of certainty. “Why?” she whispered. “Did you miss me?”
He kissed her again, swift and hard. “The longest five hours of my life,” he said. “Come, ask me to sit. Pour me a brandy, won’t you? It’s been one hell of an afternoon.”
She motioned toward the sofa by the windows, now darkening, and went to the sideboard. “Where have you been?” she asked, keeping her voice light.
“Where I said I would be,” he replied, dragging both hands through his hair. “Doing what I said I would do. It was just . . . strange, that’s all.”
On second thought, Anaïs poured herself a brandy, too. She was rather afraid she might need it.
She joined him on the sofa, and pressed the glass into his hand. But Geoff merely sipped from it, then set it impatiently away, drawing a deep breath as he did so. “Anaïs,” he said, holding his arms wide, “come here.”
She did, scooting across the narrow space and burying her face against his shoulder. She drew in his familiar, comforting scent and felt as if, at long last, she had come home.
“Anaïs,” he murmured, holding her to him, “I love you desperately. I’ve come to give you fair warning that I really do mean to lay siege to your heart. I mean to make you forget Raphaele and anyone who ever was, or ever could have been. I’ve never been unable to do anything I set my mind to—and nothing has ever mattered more than this.”
Anaïs lifted her head, and set her lips to his cheek. “You may save yourself the trouble of a siege,” she said. “I love you to distraction. And that will never change.”
He turned his ice-blue gaze on her then and, tipping her chin up with one finger, kissed her lightly on the lips. “I hope it won’t,” he said quietly. “You are everything to me, Anaïs. But there is something I need to tell you. Something important.”
She felt her breath seize. “About what?” she murmured, her eyes searching his face. “Something to do with the lady you were courting? Oh, Geoff, please don’t say she—”
“She is perfectly fine.” Then his words hitched for a moment, and he ruefully shook his head. “Oh, she still needs a husband, for her children’s sake, I think. But that’s a problem I now realize I cannot fix for her, no matter how much I might care. I thought I was willing to try, but I’m not. And she understands. She was actually quite relieved.”
