Loving Lady Lazuli (London Jewel Thieves Book 1)

by Shehanne Moore

  Their adjoining door slammed. Then it opened. The bottles clinked as he removed some of them. The to-ing and fro-ing, while he removed the rest went on for the next five minutes. Maybe staring at the wall opposite, her arms wrapped round her knees, her gaze frozen, was almost impossible with the racket he made, she’d still die before she helped him.

  Unless of course, she could somehow turn this to her advantage? Find the way to stop this? All these little broken bits of herself that kept flaking off? Accumulating in little broken mounds that once were her? Would be anyway, if she didn’t stop this.

  A way that-- big baby that he was stomping back and forward, collecting his stash, would welcome with open arms.

  A way that—while she’d die before she helped him, could conceivably, let her live, him too, the way he was going.

  A way that when it came to choice finally gave her one.

  ***

  “Give me that, Lord Hawley. Thank you.”

  As the door to the adjoining room flew open and she stood there in her bloody black peignoir, hair sitting like a dark cloud on her shoulders he knew one thing. If she thought he’d limped back and forward lugging all these bottles and then limped back and forward lugging them again, she’d another think coming in the realm of giving her anything. Too bad, if it resulted in a wrestling match that made the one with the spade look tame by comparison.

  “Give you—”

  “Yes. Now. Thank you.”

  She strode across the rug in ways he’d never seen and also, in these same diffident, sexy, had-enough-of-you, ways he had, reached past him and tried grasping hold of what he automatically put behind his back. His stash after all.

  “You said I could have it. I could have all of them,” she said.

  “And you said you didn’t want any of them.”

  “Just because I didn’t, doesn’t mean I won’t. Now—”

  “That’s what happens to great minds, Miss Armstrong.”

  “Cassidy.”

  “They think alike.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “In terms of changing them. Yes, they do. And I’m afraid in terms of my mind, that’s what’s happened.” He raised his arm higher. Such a cheap trick. Her lips were inches from his. If she wanted the bottle she could kiss him for it. She wouldn’t. So she could go. Seriously. Her eyelashes fluttered down like a dead bumblebee’s.

  “Really?”

  Anyway, why want a kiss when he could damn well have what was in these bottles? If he’d had them on him in that coach all these years ago, he’d never have been arrested, because he’d never have kissed her. He’d have been sprawled on the seat in a different sort of ecstasy. And his life? His life? Christ, what would his life be right now?

  “Well, why don’t I just take these ones then?” She stepped back, offering one of her tantalizing stares.

  “What?”

  “The ones that are right here on the bed … ”

  “Bitch.”

  She grasped two. “And why don’t I bin them? Hmm?” A gust of freezing cold air blew in as she flung the window open before he could stop her, stuck the bottles out of it too. “Just pour the contents from the window here out into the garden below. Like so? You see? Going. Going. Gone.”

  “Cussed, by-blown— Give me--” He leapt forward, reaching wildly for the catch.

  “Make any references to my ancestry and I swear I won’t help you.”

  “Damned, blasted—”

  “My occupation either.”

  “Snit-faced snit of a—”

  “Gracious Lord Hawley." She wiped her hands together. “Do you know this is the most animated I’ve ever seen you? Well, sort of anyway, if I discount certain other things.”

  What a lie. He’d other bottles after all. Crates of them. In his hand, on the bed. But how damn dare she come in here and water the flowerbeds when he’d no damn way of getting these contents back. Short of throwing himself out the window head first and licking up every spilt drop. He considered it, given what leapt along his veins. Was she even listening to the sound of his heart dribbling away below?

  “And, I don’t know about you, my lord, but I think it will do the garden good. As for the servants, if that is what you’re thinking, the servants or anyone else hearing this will just think they are listening to the sound of a chamber pot being emptied. Anyway, why trouble yourself about the servants and what they think? You haven’t this far. Although I daresay if you’re desperate you can always run down the stairs and lick it all up again. Of course, it wouldn’t have been necessary if you’d just given me the bottle in your hand.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  She strode to the bed, swung her calculating gaze over what was there.

  “But you wouldn’t. So … Let’s just see what we have here, shall we? In for a farthing, in for a guinea.”

  With what was left of him, he tore at the bottle cork with his teeth. Once what was in the bottle was safely down his throat she’d have a hard job getting it back. Even if she put a gun to his head, tore off her robe, offered herself naked. The hell with his breath tearing and his hands shaking. He hadn’t brought these bottles all the way from London for them to end as fodder for the bloody flowerbeds.

  And yet, hadn’t he laid them like sacred sacrificial offerings before her, asking for her help?

  “You do know you and Tilly are as bad as each other that way.” Another stream decorated the flower bed. “She has brandy in her coffee. You have brandy in your opiate. But a man who wants to take it straight? Well? Now, that’s a man with problems I’d say. But there, perhaps you want to happily kill yourself. Perhaps I only dreamed you asking for my help? Maybe my dreams are every bit as bad as yours?”

  He snagged a breath. “That would be difficult, Miss Armstrong. Now … if you don’t mind … ”

  “Cassidy. And yes. Yes it would be difficult, the way you judder and shudder. At least I trust I don’t do that.”

  He took his gaze down from whatever starry sky he didn’t look at. Christ’s sake she was right. Was every woman he’d slept with, every drug he’d taken, so much a part of him, it was him? Where was his measured calm? His boredom? The shadowed gaze that should flit across her skin like a shadow?

  He couldn’t do without this stuff, could he? He was just put out at her refusal to help. At limping back and forward when what bored into his thigh this morning was like the cannon blast that had torn his sleep to pieces last night.

  Hell, she’d already seen that inexcusable, damned, sweating, juddering, display. Why give her this one? The window was open. Surely he could empty this bottle out of the window to make it look as if that was why he’d just torn the cork out? With his teeth no less?

  Anything less would make him look like a damned petulant fool.

  Forget fool. Anything less would make him look like a damned addict.

  “Well, I trust I won’t spend a night like last night either from now on. There’s just some things I’ll do for myself.” He stepped forward, stuck his hand out the window, calmly, coolly, tilted the bottle. No. He wasn’t going to think how this killed him, bled his heart, because it didn’t. He’d asked for her help. Last night she hadn’t prevented the fever, or the chills, but her being there had helped. So, while the shocking waste killed him, he’d do it. Manage to speak too. “So? How is it you know so much about this?”

  “You mean when I’m a thief?”

  “I never said that. I’m just asking if you’re going to help me, how you know how to—”

  “Matthew.”

  “Right.”

  “Yes. He was an invalid. All his life. Something wrong with his chest. He suffered fevers. Terrible ones.”

  He rolled his gaze heavenwards. “And you stole for him as well?”

  “Why, don’t you know, I stole for the whole of London town.”

  “I never—“

  “Yes. All the starving poor. The sodding poor too. Someone had to look after him. That’s as much
as I know and as much as you’re getting. We might as well start honestly, if your majesty still desires my help, that is?”

  “I do. But there’s conditions. All right?”

  “I’d need to hear them before I know if I can agree to them. Because, Lord Hawley, if I can’t, then I am telling you here and now … Well. ”

  He swallowed the grimace. Christ, he should never have set any condition on this snit, then he wouldn’t be in this sorry pass. It was crystal clear as the bottles she’d just emptied what she thought these conditions were going to be. “I don’t want Tilly knowing. All right?”

  “Tilly? Tilly? Is that all?”

  “Before you laugh as I know you’re going to, given I arrived at a family reunion with a whore on my arm, given I installed you here, she and I have never had noble feelings about each other. Now that I’m accepting your help in a moment of strength as opposed to continuing on the road to perdition, in a moment of weakness, I need you to understand that, the things I’m placing in your hands here.”

  Christ. Things like no more thoughts of revenge, whores in the drawing rooms, the library, the bedrooms here. No more thoughts of his name being cleared. She could see that, couldn’t she? The things he gave away here? It was never possible to tell when she habitually glanced at everything but nothing the entire time.

  “Well. I wouldn’t have any fears about Tilly. For a start I’d need to speak to her to tell her anything. And for me to do that she’d need to speak to me first. And you’ve seen to the fact she doesn’t.”

  “I’m sorry about that. That’s just Tilly for you. Why I don’t want her kno--”

  “If that’s your conditions, your condition rather, I wouldn’t worry. So long as I can still see these papers. And you’re not about to make a condition of that?”

  “Hardly.” He was unable to suppress the huff. “I’m not exactly in a position--”

  “I so know the feeling. Although the papers aren’t a condition exactly.” She raised her chin. “No.”

  Well, of course not. Revenge? Lord Koorecroft? Being allowed to stay? How it hurt him to part with these things from the corridors and alleyways of his mind. But what choice did he have but to let them go … let them go willingly? With joy in his dark heart? Anyway, what was she going to ask exactly? Well?

  “Name it.”

  “Oh I will. I wouldn’t dream of not.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re going to be frank.”

  “It’s like this, Lord Hawley."

  "Yes?"

  "While I may sleep in your bed, or you may sleep in mine, for the remainder of my stay here I won’t sleep with you. Not any more. I won’t be your mistress. Or consent to be ruined by you further. I can’t. The choice is yours.”

  He froze. What the hell kind of a bloody choice was this? The damned audacious witch. This wasn’t a choice. This was a grinding of him beneath her boot heel when he was being perfectly reasonable. When his choice—choice, his arse—could be to go straight to Lord Koorecroft now and tell him the truth and nothing but the truth.

  He edged a breath. After all, he could feel passionate about something. And that was being bloody well out maneuvered by a snit. Robbed blind in fact. Not for the first time either. Over his dead body could he let her see it.

  “But you said the papers were your condition?”

  “I said I hoped I could still see them. I never said they were the choice.”

  “Choice? ”

  “Yes. Choice. I will help you, or I will sleep with you. I won’t do both.” Her voice, cooler than he’d ever heard it, washed over him.

  He swallowed. What the hell should it matter if he never had her again? Especially when there actually hadn’t been a decent session, a session where she dressed as he wanted, or kissed him without arguing the toss, or nicely ate the extravagant goddamned supper he’d ordered set before her. But maybe that was part of her charm? What kept him hungry enough to be ravenous on hope alone?

  So, looking at the peignoir, not to mention the silky sable hair spilling over her shoulders, and the soft, red lips and trying to make his choice?

  She was only a woman wasn’t she? To say otherwise would be to give her airs above her station. Already she had enough as to be situated in the clouds.

  His leg was accursed. The nightly sweats were too. He wouldn’t pine in any way for what she didn’t have to give him either. He put out his hand. “Hand me the remaining bottles and let’s get on with this, Miss Armstrong.”

  ***

  What a damned cheek. Dragging the linking door shut, Cass could barely keep her hands still for what shook them, her face set for the heat that scorched. What she wanted … but not. Ridiculous. Was she actually vain enough to think he’d choose her?

  Was that why she couldn’t even pour water into the washbowl to cool her face without glancing over her shoulder? Surely not in the hope the door would open? Worse, that he’d say ‘I’ve changed my mind?’

  She stared at the gray veins threading the smoothly sculpted stand, worth … she didn’t know. Jug and basin either. How could that be, when it was what had always made her much more useful to Starkadder than the other girls?

  Why hadn’t she anticipated, stepping out of this room, that what she sought—the end to the liaison—would fail to be the answer to her prayers as she stepped back in?

  Well it had and she’d be damned if she didn’t stick to it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Cass set the bowls down on the scrolled bedside cabinet, trying to be as surreptitious as possible. Except trying to be surreptitious was difficult when Devorlane Hawley lounged on top of the bed in his dressing gown. Probably naked underneath. A complaint from her would look like carping. Having carped sufficiently already why do it again? The intimacy of what she was about to do was difficult enough.

  He sat up respectfully, for him, although she preferred the stare that said she was raw meat and he was starving. At least she knew where she stood with that. Respectful now? This was a new tame Hawley, she didn’t recognize for a second. Trust as far as she could throw his magnificent frame either.

  Still, not for nothing was she mistress of subterfuge. Especially when a return to Barwych should have been on the negotiating table along with the no more sex. A renegotiating of her staying there too.

  She squeezed out the cloth.

  “Is the fever—”

  “It’s fine.” He skimmed his bored gaze over the wall opposite. “For now anyway.”

  “Good.”

  Although if that was a hint about later, he needn’t bother. He put one finger, one thumb, on her and he could have his fevers and welcome, his infected leg, and his opium too, although returning to his opium might prove a tad difficult, with it fertilizing the flowerbeds.

  “So let’s get on with this, Miss Armstrong.”

  The silence, broken by the crackling log, extended. Just because they could get on with this didn’t mean they would, not until he opened his dressing gown for her. Because she wasn’t. How could she? Especially when she’d a good idea what would be underneath. Nothing. And everything. She squeezed the cloth out for the second time.

  “Isn’t that something? Progress of a sort.”

  “How the blasted blazes would I know when this is now and later is later? All my damn fevers come at night.”

  What a hint. Heavy as the drips of water into the bowl—a shilling if she was lucky, one and six the pair. At least that ability had returned and how. She squeezed the cloth again, gave a tiny cough.

  “Is there something wrong with your throat?”

  “No.”

  “Well then …”

  She kept her gaze fastened on the cloth. “Your robe, Lord Hawley, if you don’t mind?”

  “Oh, that.”

  At least he didn’t grin as he tweaked the hem back. Fortunately grinning was something that was obviously beneath him.

  “That is just an observation about the later by the way, Miss Armstrong. It’s not an inv
itation.”

  That his thigh was now naked either?

  “It is not taken as such, Lord Hawley, I am sure. No. If you could just … sit—”

  “I am that bad to sleep with, is that it? That you don’t want to? Well?”

  How she didn’t drop the cloth, or slap him with it, she’d no idea. Perhaps because he’d turned his bored gaze on her? To fumble would massage his peacock-proud ego.

  She twisted her lips. “You’re not anything. I told you once, I’ve told you twice, I’m not actually a whore.”

  “And sleeping with me made you—”

  As she slapped the boiling hot cloth on his thigh, she did her best to keep it businesslike.

  “I’m not a nurse either. Now then, do you want to bathe your own leg?”

  Bathe his own leg? Well, he could. And he had. But he obviously hadn’t done it very well, or it wouldn’t be in this damned mess.

  And not just that. Maybe not right now as he did his best not to leap up in agony—why not pour a kettle of boiling water in the open wound, rub a cellar load of salt in too--but her actual touch was softer and more skilled than any woman’s he’d known. He was struggling to keep himself down underneath the robe just anticipating it. Truly, damnably ridiculous, when he was going to have to suffer it. And wasn’t allowed to do anything about it either. No drugs, no women. What a sorry pass.

  Even the conviction that her fingers were skilled because she was a thief wasn’t working. But then he was struggling with bad temper.

  “Fine.” He managed just to sigh. “Go ahead.” His gaze lit on the other bowl. He wrinkled his nose. Brandy. Definitely brandy. But before he thought things were looking up, he smelled mustard too. “What the hell’s that, though?”

  “That?”

  “Something you intend slapping my face with? Or worse?“

  “That’s a poultice.”

  “A what?”

  “A poultice.”