by Liz Carlyle
He gave a bark of sharp laughter. “I think that what I am feeling is bloody obvious.” Then he covered her hand with his, gave it a hard squeeze, and deliberately returned it to her own lap.
Xanthia ignored the hint. “Are you…interested, Lord Nash?” she asked.
Something flared hotly in his eyes. “Do you understand what you are asking for, Miss Neville?”
She lifted her head and pinned him with her gaze. “I am asking if you will be my lover,” she said. “For as long as it pleases us. Have you any commitment to another?”
Nash smiled sardonically. “Miss Neville, do I look the faithful type?” he returned. “I enjoy variety in my bedmates and tire of them quickly. And I must tell you frankly, my dear, that the very last thing I want or need is an innocent—particularly a well-bred innocent—in my bed.”
“I am not precisely innocent, Nash,” she murmured, allowing her bottom lip to lightly catch between her teeth. “I would, I daresay, be considered tainted merchandise—so none of your aristocratic friends would have me in their marriage bed anyway.”
He drew away, something which looked like anger glittering in his eyes. “That is a little harsh.”
“It is also true,” she said. “Does it not ease your guilt?”
“As of yet, I’ve done nothing for which to feel guilty,” he answered. “Not unless one counts that foolish kiss on Sharpe’s portico. I knew, even then, that you were going to be trouble.”
Xanthia gave him a slow, teasing smile. “Nash, if I no longer interest you, then you have only to say so,” she murmured. “I am lonely but hardly desperate. London is filled with handsome gentlemen, and whilst I am not a beauty, I have been told I possess a certain charm.”
For a long moment, he was silent, his expression darkening, his jaw tightly clenched. “I hope, Miss Neville, that you will not have a discussion of this nature with any other gentleman of your acquaintance,” he finally said. Then abruptly, he rose. “I shall think on—indeed, I shall probably be obsessed by—your mad proposal, my dear. And I pray for your sake I’ll do no more than that. Now, please allow me to see you safely back to your cousin.”
Xanthia caught his hand. He bent over her, his dark, heavy-lidded eyes seemingly focused on her mouth, and for an instant, she thought he might kiss her again. Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest. But he did not bend lower. Instead, his eyes searched her face, as if looking for something.
Xanthia held his gaze. “Nash?”
Fleetingly, he hesitated. “No,” he finally said. “No, this simply is not possible.”
Again, she smiled. “Of course it is possible,” she said. “Nothing is impossible if one dares to make it so.”
His seemingly black eyes flashed again. He did not answer, but instead straightened up, and, taking her arm, he drew her up and set off in the direction of the picnic. “Nash, you are going to dislocate my shoulder,” she complained.
He said no more until they had almost reached the first cluster of guests upriver. Then he stopped abruptly and turned to face her. “Miss Neville, you are playing with fire,” he said tightly. “Please remember that whilst I am not a rake, I am certainly not a saint, nor anything remotely near it.”
“No, I believe you once said you were a sybarite.”
“Yes, selfishly and impenitently so,” he said. “And a sybarite takes what he wants, then casts it aside when he has extracted from it all the pleasure he may. You would do well to remember that.”
Then Lord Nash turned on his heel and went swiftly up the path.
Xanthia made the journey home that afternoon in a state of dreadful confusion. She was not perfectly sure just what she had managed to accomplish at Lady Henslow’s. Utter humiliation, perhaps? She had tried to seduce Lord Nash—and she had almost accomplished it. As he said, he was no saint. He certainly did not look a saint. Indeed, he looked perfectly capable of all that de Vendenheim had accused him. So why had her brain been unable to keep hold of the fact that there was a purpose—a purpose far greater than physical pleasure—in what she was doing?
Xanthia was a person who carefully assessed her adversary, but something in Nash circumvented her usual caution. She kept thinking—imagining, really—that he knew her; that he understood her on some level which escaped most people. There was this terrible temptation simply to let herself go when she was in his company—to be…well, herself, really. But she was just deluding herself, or perhaps making silly, romantic excuses for the almost overwhelming desire she felt for him.
The man was quite likely a traitor. A smuggler. And someone had been killed, either at his word, or by his hand. Absent the heat of desire, Xanthia could remember de Vendenheim’s warnings. There was a great deal at stake, politically and economically. Power and money. The two things people were so often willing to kill for. All that aside, de Vendenheim would have been appalled to know she had tried to sleep with the man. Xanthia herself was a little appalled; she wasn’t even sure just what had taken hold of her. She had meant merely to flirt with Nash just enough to put him off his guard.
Blindly, she stared through the window at the thinning crowds along Piccadilly, and reminded herself that this was not about her. This was about greater things. It was a serious business, not some impassioned affaire of the heart. And yet, sitting with him this afternoon—touching him almost intimately, and yearning for his touch in return—Xanthia had trouble accepting that de Vendenheim’s allegations could be true.
Was she really such a fool? Nash was as cold and controlled a man as ever she had met. Indeed, she understood perfectly well that, with this man, she was in over her head. He was not a scorned and prideful man like Gareth Lloyd, whom she could manage. He was unmanageable in every sense, and she knew it. And yet, she was not dissuaded. Oh, yes. Fool was indeed the right word.
She felt the carriage rock to a halt in Berkeley Square and heard Sharpe’s footman leap down to drop the steps. Her mind forced back to the present, Xanthia kissed Louisa on the cheek and thanked Sharpe for the lovely afternoon. Then she went in, craving only a hot bath, a glass of sherry, and the solitude of her bedchamber, to receive instead the news that a caller had been awaiting her return for the last hour or better.
Apparently, her frustration showed.
“It is that foppish gentleman again, miss,” whispered Trammel. “And he’s brought a bandbox. His lordship is out, but the cheeky fellow asked for you, anyway. So I put him in the yellow salon with a glass of his lordship’s best brandy, but he won’t drink it. Sniffed it and put it down again. Have you ever heard of such a thing, miss?”
Miss had not. Perhaps she would just go into the yellow salon and drink it for him. God knows she needed something restorative. She went upstairs, mildly annoyed.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Kemble,” she said, sailing as breezily as she could into the room. “What a delightful surprise.”
“My dear Miss Neville.” The dapper gentleman made her a deep, elegant bow. “I see you took my advice—or very nearly.”
She looked at him blankly for a moment, then realized he was looking at her dress. “Oh, this?” she said, lightly touching the fabric. “Yes, but it is just blue and gray.”
“Yet very flattering nonetheless,” replied Mr. Kemble. But it was said clinically, almost as if they discussed a business matter. Perhaps they did. Indeed, Xanthia would do well to think of it in just that perspective. A business matter.
“I have brought you a gift,” said Mr. Kemble, producing the small bandbox.
“A gift?” Xanthia took it, and sat down. “You really should not have.”
Mr. Kemble, too, sat. “You must open it, my dear. We must see if it fits.”
Xanthia felt her eyes widen with surprise, but she did as he asked. It was quite inappropriate for a gentleman to give any sort of gift to an unmarried lady, and yet she sensed that this gift was somehow different.
Her eyes widened when she lifted the lid. Oh, yes. Definitely different. Nestled in a pile of wood shavings
was a sort of little leather harness with a pocket—and tucked into the pocket was a small silver pistol. Gingerly, she lifted it out.
“Have you any idea how to use it?” asked Mr. Kemble hopefully.
Xanthia laid it across her knees. “Yes, actually. But I am out of practice.”
“It is for close range only,” said Mr. Kemble with a dismissive gesture. “Now I shall turn around, Miss Neville. I wish you to hike up your skirts, and make perfectly sure it fits.”
She looked at him blankly. “If it…fits where, precisely?”
“Around your thigh,” he answered, turning to face the wall. “And pull it tight, if you please. That pistol is deceptively heavy.”
Feeling more than a little silly, Xanthia set her slipper on a footstool, drew up her petticoats, and did as he asked. The leather strap buckled snugly, as though it had been made for her. She put her foot down. “Yes, it fits,” she said. “But do you really think—”
“Absolutely,” interjected Kemble, spinning around on one heel. The man was quick as a cat, she noticed. “We cannot know what predicament might befall you, my dear, or how far away I might be.”
Xanthia looked at him blankly. “How far away from what?”
“Dear me.” There was a flash of black humor in his eyes. “Max did not tell you?”
“Lord de Vendenheim?” Xanthia shook her head. “No, he has told me nothing.”
Mr. Kemble opened his arms expansively. “My dear, it seems we are to become inseparable,” he declared. “I am your new man of affairs.”
“I can’t think what you mean,” she said.
Mr. Kemble smiled tightly. “Your personal secretary,” he clarified. “Your aide-de-camp. Your chaperone, one might almost say.”
“But I do not require one,” she said. “I have Mr. Lloyd and a counting house full of clerks. Besides, a chaperone? The notion is absurd.”
“Cela va sans dire!” said Mr. Kemble, his brown eyes rueful. “But Maximilian would insist. So I am to accompany you to your place of business and give you whatever assistance I may whilst you are at home.”
Xanthia pursed her lips. “You may inform Lord de Vendenheim that I have never had a governess and do not mean to have one now,” she finally said. “I am quite accustomed to the Docklands, and I rather doubt I’ll come across anything more dangerous than that here in Mayfair.”
Mr. Kemble looked at her chidingly. “That is all very well, Miss Neville, but what of me?”
Xanthia lifted one eyebrow. “What about you?”
Mr. Kemble gave a theatrical sigh. “Well, it is like this, my dear. Max has caught me in something of”—here, he paused to lay a finger aside his cheek—“well, let us call it a little indiscretion. A sort of affaire d’amour, as it were. An unnatural attachment that is just—well, a tad illicit. And it is the very sort of thing a man in my position should not wish to have made public.”
Xanthia lifted both eyebrows, then suddenly, his intimation struck her. “Oh. Oh, dear.” She cleared her throat decorously. “I cannot think that is anyone’s business but yours, sir. And, of course, the—the—well, the person with whom—oh, good Lord! Never mind. What has any of this to do with me?”
“Max is blackmailing me.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in. “But that is quite outrageous!”
“So it is, Miss Neville,” he replied. “But I beg you to think of me. If you turn me off, why, Max will think it my doing. He will say I did not make an earnest attempt. That I failed to impress you with my dedication and my diligence.”
Xanthia looked at him suspiciously. “I somehow imagined the two of you were friends.”
“My dear, nothing could be further from the truth!” said Mr. Kemble, with a little toss of his hand. “Sadly, Max has no friends. He is a singularly grim, humorless, and unaffectionate man who thinks only of himself and his precious Home Office.”
“Oh, I do not for one moment believe that.”
Kemble smiled, and folded his hands together on one knee. “Well, it was worth a try, was it not?” he said lightly. “Come now, Miss Neville—what harm will it do if I dog your footsteps for a fortnight or so? Perhaps you will even find me of some use. I am, if I do say so myself, a man of many talents.”
Xanthia did not doubt that. And he was entertaining, in a flamboyant and faintly dangerous sort of way. Indeed, there was an unmistakably dark edge to his personality, but at least he was not dull.
“Very well,” she finally said. “You may accompany me to Wapping each day, and we shall make a little place for you in the office. Are you a very organized person?”
“Frightfully so.”
“Excellent,” said Xanthia. “I’ve a vast storage room filled with logs and manifests from Bridgetown which need indexing and filing. But I shan’t need you otherwise, Mr. Kemble, particularly here, where I have my brother to…to safeguard me—which is an utterly silly notion anyway. And I certainly shan’t be wearing this clumsy pistol strapped to my leg.”
“But my dear, you should,” he averred. “A lady ought never go past Temple Bar unarmed. Particularly a lady in your line of work and given the assignment you have undertaken. Lord Nash is believed to be a very dangerous man.”
“Oh, of that I am quite certain,” Xanthia murmured. “But I am not at all sure he is a traitor.”
“The Home Office is quite sure he is,” said Kemble. “And they mean to see him in prison.”
“Without first having the truth?” said Xanthia archly. “Why do I begin to believe you people have already tried and sentenced Lord Nash? I am happy to help, Mr. Kemble, when it is in my company’s best interests to do so, but I won’t be a part of a mockery of justice—not at any cost. Do I make myself plain?”
“Quite plain.” Kemble looked vaguely contrite. “And perhaps you are right.”
“I think I am,” she said. “But if I am wrong—if Nash is behind this—we will know it soon enough.”
Mr. Kemble smiled and folded his hands neatly together. “And until then, wear the pistol anyway, my dear,” he pressed. “After all, a lady can never have too many silver accessories.”
She deliberately lifted one eyebrow. “Yes, and what if Lord Nash should happen across it?” she murmured. “Accidents do happen.”
Mr. Kemble gave a slow, wicked grin. “In your reticule, then?” he suggested. “But you’ll need quite a large one.”
“That is a more practical notion.” Xanthia pursed her lips again. “Very well. I shall do it.”
Mr. Kemble unfolded his hands, and smiled triumphantly.
Following the debacle at Lady Henslow’s picnic, Lord Nash went home with every intention of dining in, and staying in—to privately lick his wounds or his claw marks or whatever it was Miss Xanthia Neville had sunk into him. Her very presence left a damnable itch, one which he couldn’t seem to scratch, a bone-deep frustration as vexing as it was foreign.
He was expecting Tony for dinner, but his brother did not appear. So he ate alone, silently chewing on his own frustration, and washing it down with a bottle of Hungarian bikavér—bull’s blood, a wine stiff enough to peel the paint off the dining room walls.
It was not enough. He roamed the house like a wraith. Poked through the library shelves. Practiced vingt-et-un until his eyes crossed. Soon his restlessness drove him into the dark streets again, and he found himself halfway to Berkeley Square before he realized what he was about. He stopped abruptly on the pavement, his greatcoat swirling around his ankles in the evening’s leaden mist.
What good would it do him to go there? What did he mean to do when he arrived? Stand in the street and gaze up at the woman’s windows like some besotted lunatic?
No. No, the price for that was too high. He would take instead what he had already paid for. And he was not besotted; he was just…maddeningly intrigued. Yes, that was the word. With that decided, he strode off in the direction of Covent Garden. He would find physical satisfaction in Lisette’s bed, as he had done a hundred
times before. And if that did not work, he would go to Mother Lucy’s, and ask for a willowy brunette with bottomless blue eyes. He would ask her for—well, not for anything especially unusual, though some of Lucy’s girls could satisfy the most depraved of appetites. Nash was not interested in depravity. All he wanted was a few hours’ peace in someone’s arms.
But it was not to be Lisette’s. Not if he wished for peace. He was well into his second glass of vodka by the time she arrived home from the theater, her eyes alight with barely veiled indignation. “Why, fancy seeing you here!” she said, tossing her cloak at the cowering butler.
Nash looked up from his glass. “You are late, Lisette.”
The actress shrugged and went to the mahogany bureau. Lisette might be indignant, but she knew on which side her bread was really buttered—and it was not at Drury Lane. “I did not expect you, darling,” she said, pulling the pins from her hat. “Your habits have changed of late.”
“But I pay you to be here.”
“No, my dear, you pay me to fuck you.” She shook out her ice blond hair, eyeing his reflection in the mirror. “But there was a little après-theater soiree at Millie Dow’s. Had I seen you at all, perhaps I would have invited you.”
He snatched his drink and stood. “Come upstairs when you have finished primping.”
“Yes, I wish always to look my best for you, Nash.” Her eyes followed him in the mirror. “Why do you not take up the madeira as you go?”
“I don’t care for any,” he said.
“Well, I do,” she said. “So take a glass as well, if you please.”
There was just one glass left on the tray. Nash snatched it and the decanter, then stomped up the steps alone. Once upstairs, he set them on Lisette’s night table and slowly began to undress.
When at last she slid naked beneath the covers, he took her fiercely, thrusting deep on the first stroke, and driving himself almost madly into her, in some futile effort to push away his demons. Lisette responded—she was, after all, an actress. But in truth, she had always liked it this way. It was, perhaps, what had first drawn them together. The need to spend their frustrations and their bodies. The hunger for sexual satisfaction—but without intimacy.
