When it came, as it always did, he shot up from his seat and was at Mrs. Manning’s side in an instant. Upending her soup, he grabbed her elbow and yanked her out of her chair, but not before she cried out—the scalding soup had spilled on her bare forearm.
“Jackson!” he bellowed, hauling Mrs. Manning toward the dining room door, past the unmoved countenances of well-trained footmen. “Jackson!”
The butler had barely opened the door before Mr. Manning gave his wife a rough shove out of it. “Mrs. Manning prefers to eat in the barn with the livestock, Jackson. Please facilitate this.”
The soft clicking of the door pulled Emily from her memories. She managed a smile for the footman answering her ring.
The worst part was that Lord Blackstone was about to get tangled up with Mr. Manning. How could he? How could he ally himself with someone so awful? She felt like she’d lost something she couldn’t quite name. Angrily, she swiped at a tear. Ridiculous. She couldn’t lose what she’d never had.
Besides, she would very likely never see Lord Blackstone again after this week. And if she didn’t extract anything useful from Mr. Manning, she might never see Billy again, either. Emily had been naive to think that passively questioning Mr. Manning—either in search of evidence of his illegal slaving or about Billy—would work. She had only this final day left. If she wanted to find some real evidence, it was time to act.
Tonight.
…
It was just as well that Miss Mirren had taken ill and wouldn’t be joining them at dinner. Blackstone had a mind to do a little poking around this evening. He wasn’t foolish enough to think he’d find any great piece of evidence just lying about in Manning’s room, but with any luck the man would have overlooked something that Blackstone and Bailey could use. He certainly didn’t need Miss Mirren’s keen eyes watching him as he slipped away from dinner.
As arranged, Stanway tapped him on the forearm during the fish course, murmuring apologies. Blackstone turned to Mrs. Talbot and whispered that an urgent matter needed his attention belowstairs. She had been in the middle of a treatise on the wisdom and good judgment of gentlemen who waited until they were more mature to turn their attention to matrimony, but his interjection stopped her cold. Silencing Mrs. Talbot! Now that was an accomplishment!
The cool air of the foyer was a relief as he bounded up the stairs. There would be no mistaking the room this time. Stanway had precisely described its location and assured him that none of the staff would be on this level of the house. Spying in one’s own house was so easy Blackstone could probably do it half asleep. He needn’t be on alert for anything. An odd, but refreshing, change.
He pushed the door open. Correction—he needn’t be on alert for anything except Emily Mirren. Of course. He had a split second to consider the matter before she turned. A mere second to think what to say. How to feel.
It wasn’t enough time. She whirled, caught red-handed rummaging through Manning’s bedside table. Her eyes widened, and he saw true fear in them as she shrank from him. He swallowed the accusation that had bubbled up his throat and settled instead for, “Miss Mirren, is it possible that your father has, from beyond the grave, sent you to haunt me in his stead?”
When she didn’t answer, just screwed up her face so that the crease between her eyebrows deepened, he sighed and closed his eyes, shutting the door and leaning back against it. “No, of course not. I know what you’re doing here.” Blast her, she was doing exactly what he was—looking for something to incriminate Mr. Manning. He just prayed she had not beaten him to it.
“I was looking for…I was lost. I’ve lost my way.”
“Don’t lie to me. I’m too smart for that. You’re too smart for that.” He felt the same rising anger he’d allowed to consume him that morning at the lake, and later, when they’d met in the library for the first time. The woman had the power to move him like no one else. But it wouldn’t do any good to rage at her. Sitting on the bed, he punched the mattress. “Why are you always in my way?”
“In the way of what? What are you doing here?”
“This is my house.”
“Is that your answer for everything?” She was acting like a petulant child caught with her hand in the candy jar.
“Yes,” he ground out, throwing his arms in the air in exasperation. “That is my answer for everything.” She took a step back so that she was practically inside the armoire, her eyes glued to his arms. He had the sudden, sickening feeling that she thought he was going to strike her. He knew that look of defeated resignation, had seen it many times in the course of his intelligence work, which often took him to London’s unsavory corners. He’d seen it on men rotting away in Newgate. On children forced to beg for their daily bread.
This was not a look he wanted to see on Miss Mirren’s face. If someone had raised a hand to the captain’s daughter—even once—so help him, his rage would grow so great that he would, for the first time, commit murder outside the line of duty.
“Who has hurt you?” he whispered.
“No one.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sit,” he said, pointing to the space next to him on the bed.
She remained suspended in indecision, and he suppressed the urge to physically make her sit. Her mouth opened, and then closed as if she’d been about to say something but thought better of it. He pulled her letter from his pocket—his trump card. “Shall we discuss this instead?”
She sat.
“That is my personal correspondence!”
“Which I found on the floor in my house.”
“That doesn’t give you the right!” She lunged for the letter, but he was faster. He twisted and set it out of her way, then used his good hand to grab her forearm, holding it against his chest, immobilized against his thudding heart. Staring at her as he would a face he was trying to memorize, he watched her break. Flashing eyes and pursed lips gradually gave way as her face began to crumple.
The first tear escaping the corner of her eye was a fissure in the stone of his self-control, a tiny crack he could tell was going to widen into a chasm. He heard the hitch in his own breath, suddenly seeing the immensity of the sadness she was carrying around. It was as if she could no longer contain it. Too much for one person to bear, it had spilled over, taking up residence in his chest, weighing down his lungs so that each breath was more difficult than the last.
He let go of her arm, but she kept it pressed against his chest as several more tears began to silently spill down her cheeks.
He had seen women cry before. Often they deployed strategic tears to get what they wanted. If genuine, tears were usually accompanied by embarrassment. Heads ducked and hands shot up to wipe away the evidence.
But Miss Mirren just faced him with her wide, watery blue-violet eyes. The same eyes he’d watched the life drain out of in Badajoz.
“Don’t cry,” he said. She had to stop. He couldn’t breathe. “Please, Miss Mirren.” If this woman continued crying, it would break him in a way that three days of interrogation by Le Cafard’s men had not. He willed her to recover, to revert to the indignant anger he’d seen just a moment ago. “Stop,” he said, too stridently.
She just shook her head, apology in her eyes as she continued to weep silently, every tear a millstone on his chest.
And then he knew he was going to kiss her. It was the only way to make her stop—the only way to save himself. A drowning man wasted no time, and so he pressed his lips against hers—hard—without preamble, his good hand clamping on the back of her head, fingers tangling in her curls.
A surprised gasp parted her lips, and he seized the opportunity, sliding his tongue into that plump mouth he had admired so often. The gasp was followed by a soft sigh as she settled into the kiss, her hands grasping the lapels of his coat, as if she wanted to make sure he wouldn’t flee.
The possessive gesture set his groin on fire, and he deepened the kiss, caressing the inside of her mouth. She wa
s unpracticed but not unenthusiastic. She met him stroke for stroke, tentatively at first, and then with increasing confidence. A small part of his mind wondered, with a surprising jolt of affection, if she had read a book about kissing.
That whisper of a thought was enough to bring him back to reality. He was kissing a woman whose experience was all theoretical, who learned everything she knew from books. He was kissing Emily Mirren—the captain’s daughter, for God’s sake—without honorable intentions. He would personally murder anyone else who committed the same sin. Worse, she had come to him last night, with her wild idea about moonlight swimming, because she wanted to help him. And this was how he repaid her?
He pulled away sharply enough to shake loose of her grip on his coat.
Her face was pink and her eyes wide, but they were also dry. He nodded, feeling a sharp twinge of satisfaction. At least he’d accomplished that much. Now, to send her on her way so he could search this bloody room.
Rising, he opened the door and, in a caricature of courtliness, bowed and gestured for her to depart. It took a moment for her to obey. When she made to brush past without looking at him, he grabbed her elbow and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Meet me at the lake tonight at two o’clock. I’ll apologize for that kiss then.”
Chapter Eight
Emily didn’t want Lord Blackstone to apologize. She wanted him to kiss her again. It was the honest to goodness truth, she thought as she donned her cloak and slipped out via the back terrace.
And if he didn’t, she would kiss him. She’d had several sleepless hours to think about it. She wasn’t going to marry, and until tonight it hadn’t occurred to her she’d be missing anything. She’d had two kisses in her life. The first was with Billy, when they’d both been eleven. Emily had read about kissing in a Minerva Press novel and commandeered her friend to practice. It had resulted only in a mutual fit of disgust, and she’d had to swear never to repeat the assault before Billy would deign to speak to her again. The second had come later, from the son of family friends of the Mannings. She’d been sixteen and curious—novels did make kissing seem like quite the thing—and the boy had been acceptable enough, if a trifle dull. The whole thing had been…not unpleasant, exactly, but uninspiring. Nothing she felt the need to repeat, and certainly not at all like its fictional counterpart. No choruses of angels. No rising tides of passion. Kissing, she’d decided, was an activity that was better read about in books than experienced by one’s person.
Obviously, she’d been wrong.
Apparently it was important to kiss the right person if you wanted rising tides of passion and choruses of angels. She shivered as she crested the hill that led to the lake, taking big gulps of the sea air that permeated the estate.
He must have excellent hearing, for he turned from where he was sitting on the dock. The brilliant moonlight gilded the planes of his shirtless chest as he leaped to his feet in a single, graceful movement, like a cat. She paused at the top of the hill, swallowing repeatedly in the hopes that it would calm the frantic pounding of her pulse in her throat. Was she really going to do this?
He lifted a hand in greeting, causing the lean muscles in his chest to undulate.
Starting down the hill, she felt a little like she was marching to her doom. Walking a short plank into an endless expanse of sea that was sure to subsume her. A kiss, she reminded herself, willing her heart to slow. Just a kiss.
“Next time, sea bathing,” he said as she approached. She struggled to make sense of the assertion—why would he think there would be a next time? Tomorrow they were returning to London, and she would almost certainly never see him again.
That last thought emboldened her. She would never see Lord Blackstone again. All the more reason to kiss him here tonight. And an excellent excuse to look her fill. She allowed her gaze to slide down, to take in the broad shoulders that narrowed to a sculpted waist. This was very likely the first and last time she would ever see a man’s naked chest. Well, she’d seen Billy’s… She shook her head. Now was not the time for memories like that. Better to concentrate on making Lord Blackstone want to kiss her again—or on screwing up her courage to kiss him.
“Next time, the sea, but tonight, the lake. Time to take your advice. Time for a swim.” Narrowing his eyes, he stared at the water intently.
Belatedly realizing her mouth was hanging open, she snapped it shut. If he’d noticed her ogling him, he was gentlemanly enough not to remark on it. She needed to get a hold of herself. She’d been thinking of nothing but the kiss she hoped they would share, when here was Lord Blackstone preparing to face his fear.
Clearing her throat, she considered the situation. A small part of her protested that it was difficult to do so when her companion’s shirt had gone missing. He stood so close that she could feel the heat radiating off him. Despite it, and the warm night, she shivered. She took a step away. “Will it help if I go in first?”
He glanced at her before returning his attention to the lake, one corner of his mouth turning up slightly. “Why? So you can rescue me if I begin to flail?”
“No.” She felt suddenly foolish. “I meant only to offer moral support.” To have presumed that her presence would have any effect on the proceedings as Lord Blackstone faced his demons was a schoolgirl’s naive fantasy. “But of course I’ll just stay here and—”
“Thank you, yes. I think it will help enormously if you go in first.” He looked her up and down, clinically, as if he were inspecting a horse at Tattersalls. Before she could think what to say, he turned his back. “Tell me when you’re in.” When she didn’t move, he shot her a look over his shoulder. “Good Lord, Miss Mirren, you can’t go in in your cloak and gown, or you’ll be weighed down so much that I’ll have to rescue you.”
He did have a point. And despite the moonlight, the water was very dark. One couldn’t see beneath its glassy black surface at all. Once she was in, her modesty would be well enough preserved.
“Do you need help?” A teasing tone made its way into his speech. “I’m quite at your service should you require any assistance disrobing.”
“No!” It came out a shout, spurring her to action. Throwing off her cloak, she willed clumsy fingers to make quick work of the pearl buttons that ran down the front of her bodice. She hopped around on the dock as the dress slid into a pool at her feet, followed by her stockings. Without pausing long enough to allow herself to think better of the whole absurd affair, she ran off the edge of the dock.
The normally cold water was icier than usual without the warmth of the sun. Surfacing, she swallowed the shriek that had risen up her throat and began to tread water. There wasn’t a chance to catch her breath before Lord Blackstone began unbuttoning the fall of his breeches. He must have dispensed with his boots while she was underwater.
“Wait!” she gasped. It was enough to interrupt his progress. “Leave your smalls on! Please!”
A wicked smile blossomed across his face. “How can you be certain I’m wearing any?”
Her cheeks burst into flame, and she turned. He probably thought she was averting her face so she wouldn’t have to look at him, but in truth she didn’t want him to see how much he’d discomfited her. The assault on her senses continued unabated when he pounded down the dock and launched himself off the edge like a cannonball. The enormous splash that resulted had her sputtering and wiping her eyes.
She needed to prepare herself for anything. He’d teased her about saving him if he drowned, but what if he did have a strong negative reaction? What if his memories came rushing back?
More importantly, what in heaven’s name had she been thinking? The cold water had a sobering effect. Here she was in the middle of the night, swimming in her chemise with a man who might or might not be wearing smallclothes. Not just any man—an earl. A potentially naked earl whose brother drowned in this very lake.
Where was he? He hadn’t broken the surface yet. “Lord Blackstone!” she called. “My lord!” He’d overshot her with hi
s dramatic jump, and she swam toward where he’d hit the water. Dear God, if she couldn’t find him, she was going to have to get out and run to the house.
He was going to die in the same watery grave as his brother, and it would be her fault.
“Please, Lord Blackstone!” Her voice had risen, become shrill. Making a conscious effort to lower it in the hope that a more resonant tone would carry down through the water, she tried once more. “Eric!”
With as little warning as accompanied his entrance into the water, he shot up, suddenly next to her. And he was grinning.
She slapped him.
Ha! That wiped the smug look off his face. His eyebrows flew up and his hand went to his cheek.
She didn’t even bother trying to temper the accusation in her voice as she swam to the dock and grabbed one of its posts, willing her runaway heart to slow. “That was a very mean-spirited trick.” No doubt he would have something withering to say, something that would make her feel she’d overreacted. “I thought you were…” The thought was too unbearable to finish.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.” He swam over and took hold of the nearest post, which put him a few feet from her. The moonlight washed over him, making his wet skin shine. “It’s just that, when I hit the water, something happened.”
“What?”
“I realized I wasn’t afraid.”
Her anger melted into the cold water.
He looked around, as if seeing the lake for the first time. “I’ve given this place too much power. The lake didn’t kill my brother. He killed himself. I should know. I watched it happen.”
She tried to mask her shock, but he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he stared at the middle of the lake, oddly expressionless. He’d witnessed the suicide—a detail he’d omitted in his recounting last night. How horrific.
“There was a storm that night. You knew that.”
She nodded, though he still didn’t turn his gaze to her.
“I was awakened by his valet, who reported him missing.” It was as if he were speaking to someone else entirely, giving a speech to a remote audience. “That wasn’t altogether unusual, but unlike other times he’d disappeared, we didn’t find him hiding in a closet, or lost in the maze.”
The Miss Mirren Mission Page 10
