The Devilish Montague

by Patricia Rice

  “That, too, which is why we thought he’d make an excellent vicar. The good Lord has saved his life so many times, it must be for a purpose.”

  To annoy me, would be Jocelyn’s guess, but she supposed it was a selfish thought. Not that Blake was any less selfish, fretting his mother with his careless attitude. “I’m sure we all have a purpose. It just isn’t necessarily what others expect of us.”

  “I’ve accepted that,” Lady Montague said with a heavy sigh. “But that does not mean he must go off to deliberately get himself killed. Anyone with a modicum of good sense could see he might solve his silly puzzles right here, without going to war.”

  “A modicum of good sense might prevent wars in the first place,” Jocelyn said. “But I have not seen men exercise such qualities when a good fight will do. You do not think it honorable to defend our country?”

  “I lost two brothers to war!” Lady Montague cried in anguish. “Both wore the silver streak in their hair. I am relying on you to keep Blake home, persuade him to the vicarage, where we can watch over him. His clever mind is sufficient force without need of guns.”

  Jocelyn most heartily agreed with the latter, if not the part about a vicarage, but she did not dare mention that the point was moot. She had no funds left with which to buy his colors. She was simply waiting for the ax to fall when Blake found out.

  After speaking with the banker handling Jocelyn’s funds, Blake stormed in the direction of his city rooms. He was still too stunned to be coherent.

  She had deceived him. His lovely, wide-eyed Carrington bride had led him to believe she could buy his colors when, in fact, she was practically penniless. How could he have ever believed all that blond innocence hid a character any better than her scapegrace brother’s?

  He wanted to howl and punch something. Which could also have something to do with the fact that he’d been left unsatisfied on his wedding night. He’d spent a lonely, aching night on a damned cot while his wife luxuriated in their bed. Now, of course, her betrayal had turned all hint of lust into bloody-minded anger.

  What could she have done with a thousand pounds? She’d only been in London half a year, with naught on which to spend her coin but frills and furbelows. Had she somehow poured the money into the house when she’d said his parents were paying for the repairs? Why the devil would she lie to him about that? And what else might she have lied about?

  He despised deceit above all else, so why had he married the sister of lying, conniving Carrington? Lust and silver-blond tresses had infected his brain.

  He supposed now that he was legally in charge of her funds, he could control Jocelyn’s expenditures once her semiannual income arrived, but that wouldn’t be until January.

  He only had until Christmas to fill the position Wellesley was holding for him. An ensign was the cheapest post he could obtain. How would he find four hundred fifty pounds in three months?

  He had the most beddable wife in the world, and he couldn’t in all conscience bed her, not if he meant to leave. He was as penniless as he had been before he married. He was no closer to solving the code now than he’d been before. And he was now responsible for a house, a demented brother-in-law, and an obscene parrot. What in hell kind of twisted trap had he fallen into?

  The first damned thing on his agenda was to let his rooms go. Carrington House was hardly the center of London, but it was spacious enough to hold his books. He could save his own modest income, although even with the increase his father had granted upon his marriage, his available funds wouldn’t pay for an ensign’s position.

  When Blake reached his rooms, Quent was waiting for him at the top of the stairs.

  “What the devil are you doing back in town?” his towering lordship demanded. “You’ll owe me a pair of bays at this rate.”

  “I didn’t make that wager. You did.” Blake unlocked his door and entered rooms bereft of a screaming parrot and already smelling empty in comparison to Jocelyn’s beeswax-polished nest.

  “Carrington and Ogilvie had dinner together last night,” Quent informed him, heaving his hat at a document-strewn table. “You’d better tell your bride to give back that bird before the vultures start circling.”

  “I’ve already been attacked by one of Ogilvie’s minions.” Although now that his lust-hazed mind had cleared, he wondered if Bernie was capable of speaking French well enough for the thief to understand his orders. He needed to ponder that. Why would a thief be in the conservatory except to steal back the bird?

  Blake searched an empty cabinet and found nothing worth serving his guest.

  Which made him wonder if Jocelyn had enough funds for food and if her other brother, the demented elder one, would leave her be. Or if they must fight off intruders on a regular basis.

  “It’s hard to believe the duke would have that much interest in an obscene bird,” Quentin mused, pacing in front of Blake’s overflowing desk. “Perhaps His Grace is just punishing his nephew for being a twit.”

  “Or perhaps there is more to the bird than we know.” The moment he said that, Blake wanted to pound his head against the wall for having ignored the obvious. “Percy once belonged to the Carringtons. There is no knowing what’s in its beady little brain.”

  Quentin looked up with interest. “Something a duke would want?”

  “Or something His Grace wouldn’t want known,” Blake concluded grimly. “And that Carrington might know. Ogilvie is in deep if he’s playing both sides of the board.”

  “Unwittingly,” Quentin suggested. “You’d best warn His Grace.”

  Blake snorted. “Even should a duke allow me in his exalted presence, he’s likely to laugh in my face if I give him no more than supposition. I’d best get to the bottom of the puzzle first.”

  Which meant confronting his bewildering wife. Without bedding her. Now there was a challenge he might not be prepared to face.

  22

  From the garret over the carriage house where she’d gone to ascertain that Blake had everything he needed, Jocelyn watched out the window as an oxcart rolled up the overgrown drive. She had not ordered anything delivered. All her trunks were already here, emptied and stored away. So what was in those towering stacks of crates?

  She shook out her dusty skirt and glanced about the room Blake had made his own the night before. She’d had the footman carry over a spare table and chairs this morning, but she wouldn’t tear apart a perfectly good study to accommodate the irritating man. If he meant to live in such crude surroundings, he’d have to find his own shelves and desk.

  She deliberately blocked out any thought of what Blake was learning from the bankers. She wasn’t even entirely certain she’d ever see his face darken her door again. The possibility hurt more than she wanted to admit.

  She hurried down the rough ladder to discover what the new arrival meant.

  She almost ran straight into her husband as he opened the carriage house door at the same time she shoved at it. Wearing a caped greatcoat against the damp, his hat pulled over his eyes, and his arms full of books, Blake stepped backward at her abrupt appearance.

  “Madam?” he said coolly, juggling the books and looking upon her as if she were a mongrel caught rummaging in the trash. “Were you looking for me?”

  “Of course not. Why should I?” she responded as haughtily as he, then moved aside so he might enter out of the rain. “I had the servants carry in some furniture, but if you wish to install your books, I fear it must be in the study. There are no shelves out here.”

  He muttered something irascible and set his stack down on the dirty floor. He glanced about at the large empty space and the stalls that would house only his gelding. “Since we have no carriage, this space is wasted. A pity we cannot afford a carpenter.”

  His voice dripped scorn, and Jocelyn flinched. He’d been to the bank, of course.

  “I am sorry,” she said with more defiance than apology. “But Richard is more important than sending you off to war. Now that I’ve paid off Harol
d and I’m Richard’s legal guardian, my next allotment is yours. Harold was insistent. I had no choice.”

  Blake took off his hat and shook it to shed the raindrops. “What the devil does Harold have to do with your damned dowry? I thought we disillusioned him of the notion that he had any claim to your income.”

  “Come in and have some tea before you catch your death of cold. There is no sense talking out here when we have a perfectly good fire in the house.”

  “Quit mollycoddling me and just tell me what your damnable brother has done!” he shouted. “I have a cart of books outside getting wet and I detest tea!”

  “Of all the irrational . . .” Jocelyn shut up at the fire leaping to Blake’s eyes. She had learned long ago that stating her point of view was useless. Really, she didn’t know what she’d thought to accomplish by losing her temper and expressing her fears yesterday. Rather than bicker, she pulled her shawl over her head and hurried down the path to the house. If he wanted answers, he’d get them when she was warm.

  Perhaps walking out was another act of pacifying an angry male, which she’d vowed never to do again—especially since she sent Molly the maid for coffee as well as tea, and the footman to help unload the cart. She couldn’t help it, she liked being useful. And she hated confrontation. When Blake arrived with his arms full of books, she hurried to unlatch the study door, glancing anxiously at his wrist. No blood stained the bandage.

  “The shelves have been dusted and polished,” she told him. “I did not disturb anything more than that since I thought you might like to arrange the study to your taste.”

  “I want to know what Harold has to do with my not being able to buy an officer’s colors—as we agreed.” Still wearing his damp greatcoat and dwarfing the room with his masculine presence, he slammed the volumes onto the desk.

  She ought to be terrified of his fury, but oddly, she wasn’t. Instead, she hurt for him. And she didn’t want to. Richard had to come first.

  Jocelyn waved him out of the way so Molly might enter with the tea tray. Teddy, the footman, arrived carrying a crate of books, and she gestured for him to light the coals in the grate. She took several of the volumes off Blake’s stack, saw they were in Latin, sighed, and set them on a shelf at random.

  Blake shoved the others next to them, coming so close to her that she could smell wet wool and the enticing male scent she recognized as purely his. Desire curled inside her, and she hated that he could make her want his kisses simply by his proximity.

  Once the servants had departed, and Blake had shrugged off his wet coat so he didn’t look quite so menacing, she poured coffee and handed a cup to him. “Harold threatened to lock Richard in the attic if I did not pay him four hundred pounds in return for signing over the guardianship papers. I saw no other choice.”

  “You could have told me! That was one choice. Hiring a lawyer was another.”

  “Hitting Harold over the head was still another,” she agreed mockingly. “I doubt any of them would have gained me what I wanted. I thought it an excellent bargain. Now Harold may never threaten Richard again.”

  “Of course he will threaten Richard again. Every time he needs money he’ll find a way to challenge any documents held by a woman. And you still went through with this farce of a marriage, even though you knew I needed the funds now!”

  “I hired a lawyer. The papers are irrevocable! I’m not a dunderhead,” she said, with more anger than she’d intended. “And you will have the funds,” she protested. “It will just be a little later than anticipated. If Wellesley does not mean to leave until spring, I cannot see the harm.”

  “The harm will be that he cannot leave a position on his staff open until spring! I will be out on the front lines with all the enlisted men instead of decrypting code behind the lines. If you wish to keep me alive, you might want to consider that.”

  Blake took another swallow of his coffee and stalked out.

  Jocelyn nibbled her fingernail and wondered how she would repair this new catastrophe. She didn’t want Blake killed because of her!

  Like it or not, she was now responsible for keeping him alive. Measures must be taken. Her shoulders bent beneath the burden of yet one more duty for which she was not qualified.

  Blake had crated and carted his entire library by himself, borrowing a cart from one of Quent’s businesses in which to haul the boxes. His healing leg protested and his wounded wrist ached as he lugged the books into the study, but it was easier than hauling them into a loft. At least he had the help of his footman’s broad back.

  He had a study and a footman and coffee on tea trays, but no damned officer’s colors. He wanted to gnash his teeth, but in all fairness, he could not argue with his bride’s choice. That she had been smart enough to hire a lawyer and demand an irrevocable custodianship had caught him by surprise. And even he wouldn’t want any of his family in the clutches of Viscount Pig, as Harold would always be termed in his mind after hearing Jocelyn’s name for him.

  Which only made Blake want to howl louder. It was only a day after their wedding and she had deceived him already. Yet he’d known all along that she wasn’t to be trusted. He had only his blind lust and greed to blame for accepting this arrangement. And his desire to have what was Carrington’s, he admitted.

  Except, as usual, Carrington had walked off with the money. How did the fat bounder always manage that? Blake was as furious with himself as he was with Jocelyn.

  He dropped a crate on the floor, taking satisfaction in the slamming of wood against wood. With his luck, the floor would give way and he’d end up in the kitchen stew pot. What the devil did he do now? Talk to a parrot? Investigating why the duke wanted Percy had made sense in his rage, but he’d lived with the damned bird for weeks and had not heard anything useful out of its mouth except a new French curse or two.

  Could he make leaps of assumption and wonder if Percy speaking French and Harold’s wife being French had any connection to a French thief? He was grasping at straws if he thought bird-wits were spies. Besides, hadn’t Harold sold the bird to the duke?

  Blake ran his hand through his already disheveled hair and glared at the empty—polished—shelves. He’d never adapted well to domestication, but he had to admit that an entire room of shelves instead of overflowing tables and stacks of tottering books had appeal. The top of the massive, polished mahogany desk would provide more space for his research.

  The wine-colored walls . . . He rummaged through one of his boxes and produced the chart of possible alphanumeric equations that could be employed through Jefferson’s version of the code wheel. He could pin the chart on the wall where he could view it more easily.

  He was rooting through the crate of code books when his young brother-in-law wandered in. Immersed in what he was doing, Blake ignored the lad. Blessedly, Richard made no greeting, but began perusing the shelved titles. When the boy found the crate of wire mind teasers people had given Blake over the years, he settled into a leather chair and began to take them apart.

  Blake forgot he was there. Had his own brothers been so silent, he would have thought them dead, but Richard was obviously cut from a different cloth. The fluffy pug-nosed puppy wandered in and fell asleep at Richard’s feet.

  Blake had all the books shelved, his work organized on the desk, and was sipping the last of a brandy he’d found while packing when Jocelyn reappeared.

  By all that was holy, even knowing she was a deceitful minx, Blake couldn’t help admiring his wife’s stunning loveliness. She still wore her dowdy morning gown, and strands of ivory hair had fallen loose from their pins, but her rose lips begged for kissing, and her lively eyes danced upon taking in the domestic scene.

  Something in her expression caused Blake to glance toward Richard. The boy had systematically dismantled all his cleverly designed puzzles and had them spread across the floor. He was studying them as if he could find some new means of putting the jumble back together again.

  It had taken grown men days to undo
just one of those pieces.

  The wretched puppy was chasing escaped parts under the chairs. Blake would never find and match all the right pieces and return them to their original state again.

  His bride waited with an expression of expectation.

  If she waited for him to bellow and shout—Blake shut down that thought. Of course, she thought he would yell and threaten. She had only Viscount Pig as an example. And maybe her brothers-in-law. He’d have to meet the louts someday, but he damned well wasn’t following in their footsteps.

  “You had a message?” he asked in a tone of irritation he couldn’t conceal. He had Venus for a wife, an enormous roof over his head, a place to work in peace, but he still didn’t have what he most wanted. Because she’d lied. He wasn’t certain he’d ever forgive that.

  “I thought we might have a bite to eat before we attend Lord Cowper’s soiree.”

  Blake scratched his ear and wondered if his mind had wandered while she was saying something he hadn’t quite caught. “Cowper’s soiree?”

  “Yes, of course. I accepted the invitation some time ago, and I’m certain that as my husband, you will be welcome. The Cowpers were married only a few years back. The earl is too busy buying estates to be helpful, but Lady Cowper knows everyone. She has been reintroducing me to all my father’s old cronies.”

  “Old cronies?” He would sound like the parrot shortly.

  “Lord Melbourne, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Castlereagh . . .” She waved her hand vaguely as she reeled off the names of some of the most powerful political figures in the country.

  “Why would you wish to bother men like that?” he asked warily.

  “Originally, I’d hoped they might know to whom Harold had sold Richard’s birds, but now I think there might be other ways of obtaining your colors besides money. Knowing people can be very beneficial. It will not hurt, and you cannot bury yourself with books every evening. I have had Teddy lay out your gray coat, but you must be peckish by now. Let us see what Cook has prepared. Richard, go wash up.”