Tempting the Scoundrel (Private Arrangements Book 2)

by Katrina Kendrick

  “And their school fees? Who takes care of those?”

  He only said, “It’s a small fee to pay. Gets them off the streets.”

  “But you pay it,” she pressed. “Don’t you?”

  “I pay,” he confirmed quietly. At her long silence, he gave a dry laugh. “If you’re worried about mistaking me for a good man, don’t bother,” he said. “I care for what’s mine. No more, no less.”

  Something in her bristled at that. He was giving her permission to hate him, was he? “How kind of you to remind me,” she murmured, rising from the bed. She held up the dress he’d provided against her. While a touch too big in the bosom for one as small breasted as Alexandra, it was close enough in size everywhere else.

  Nick spoke from directly behind her. “Mrs. Ainsley, the manager of the orphanage where Fi and Lottie stay, offered the dress when she’d heard you came in your nightclothes. The lads didn’t have time to go through your wardrobe before your servants woke. They had other tasks.”

  Yes, this was easier: focus on who hired her abductor and killed Mary Watkins. The sooner they solved the matter, the sooner she could bring up the subject of divorce. Then she would board a ship and travel to all the places she’d only read about in guidebooks: Italy, France, Greece, New York. Anywhere.

  Anywhere far away from him.

  “You don’t intend on involving the police?”

  “They’re involved.” At her raised eyebrow, he gave a rueful smile. “Suppose it doesn’t shock you to know I’ve got a few of London’s finest in my pocket.”

  “The only thing that would shock me, Nicholas Thorne,” she said, “is if it were only a few. Did anyone recognize the man in my bedchamber?”

  “No.” The answer was clipped. “Men who kill or abduct for money are worth more if they’re not recognizable.” She caught his look as she reached for the top button of her night rail. “Listen, O’Sullivan and the lads cleaned up your room, had to take a carpet or two, on account of the bloodstains. We’ll stop by St. James’s to pick up a few things, but you’re not staying there.”

  Alexandra shrugged. “Fine.”

  “Now, why do I get the sense that answer doesn’t mean you agree with me?”

  “Because I don’t. You want me to stay here in your gambling den.” She twisted to reach for the back of the nightgown, but Mrs. Ainsley must have had help donning this particular dress.

  Nick nudged her hands aside to help her undo the buttons. “Aye, I want you to stay here in my fucking gambling den.”

  Alexandra tossed the nightgown to the floor. “Not interested.”

  Nick gave a slow exhale of appreciation. Yes, he was not entirely immune to her. He might be a deceitful blackguard, a crook, entirely immoral, but he couldn’t hide his desire. She knew it well. It was the only truth between them.

  Her words must have finally made it past his lust. “Wait, what the hell do you mean, not interested.”

  “I’m not staying here with you.” She threw on the chemise and drawers and started on the corset. “Lace me, please.”

  He made a frustrated noise and began to lace her in. “Don’t even think of suggesting a hotel where anyone can waltz in.”

  “I’m not. I’ll stay with Richard and Anne at their townhouse in Bloomsbury. My brother has kept a bodyguard on retainer since his father-in-law’s trial.”

  “You think those swells in Parliament don’t want to see Grey taken down a peg after revealing the prime minister’s involvement with covering up child murder? You think they’ll forgive his wife for sharing their secrets?”

  He finished lacing her up, and Alexandra slipped on the dress. Without being asked, he began to button her up. “Of course not, but I’ll be safe there.”

  “You’ll be safe here.”

  “That man was in my bedchamber because I am married to you.” Alexandra was not in the mood to mince words. “That body in Whitechapel the other night was to taunt you. So perhaps you ought to consider your very long list of enemies and narrow it down to a single nemesis.” She threw up her hands. “Where are my bloody boots?”

  Nick crossed to the bed and reached under it for her boots. Thrusting them at her, he said, “So you’re going to put your brother’s life in further danger? His wife? Just narrowly missed being married to a killer, that one. You want to risk her unborn child, too?”

  Alexandra reared back in shock. “Who . . . who told you . . . ? Anne is with child?”

  “Grey talks,” Nick said dryly. “Rather a lot.”

  She let out a swear and pressed her lips together. It was difficult enough being in the same room with him, but staying here, night after night? Separate rooms wasn’t enough. The span of the ocean might not be, but it was a start. Then another four years. Ten years. Twenty.

  Enough time for her to learn to trust someone again. “Fine. I will . . . stay.”

  Then, when this was over, she’d pack her things and leave him.

  Chapter 9

  Richard Grey was at the Earl of Kent’s residence when they arrived. At the sight of Thorne with Alex, the other man’s eyebrows shot up and a grin spread across his face.

  “Hello, little sister,” he said to Alex. “What—”

  “I’m not speaking to you.” She swept past her brother and stomped to the stairs, the heels of her boots echoing sharply through the foyer. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me I’m going to be an aunt,” she called over her shoulder.

  Richard gave Thorne a look. “You told her?”

  Thorne reflected the oddity of being included in something as trifling as family melodrama. It was a pleasant change in pace. The lads he’d grown up with in Whelan’s dark cellar always had trouble that wasn’t the easy sort; those often ended in death.

  “How was I to know you didn’t tell her?” he asked with a shrug.

  “You’ve been separated for four years. Telling you was like telling any other man on the street.”

  “Send one of them my way.” Alexandra’s muffled shout came from upstairs. “They’d make me a better husband.”

  Richard’s lip twitched. Thorne couldn’t decide if it was to hide his amusement or suppress a grimace. “So you’re not in the middle of a reconciliation with her, then.”

  “Not even close,” Thorne said.

  Richard gestured to a nearby door. “Drink? Several?”

  “Christ, yes.”

  In the study, Grey poured brandy into a pair of snifters and handed one to Thorne. The last time Thorne had been in this room was three months ago. He’d barely tasted the brandy then; it served as an inadequate distraction from thoughts of murder. Grey had discovered the Duke of Kendal had been covertly adopting children from the orphanages in the East End—none of them were ever seen again.

  Richard and Thorne had broken into the duke’s home and found a child in a cellar there. Had they been a day later, they might not have saved the lass. Thorne keenly felt some of the blame. He had a responsibility for the children of the East End—to look after them, if he could—but even he didn’t have the power to stop every piece of shite in the city from doing unspeakable acts. He’d just do his best, one case at a time. One threat at a time.

  One murder at a time, if necessary.

  And now his wife had seen the monstrousness that people in this city were capable of.

  The sweetness of the brandy suddenly seemed too cloying; a good Irish whisky would have suited better. Something that burned and satisfied in equal measure. Being this near Alex after four years . . . Thorne’s nerves were damn near fraying. As she disrobed that morning, he keenly felt the loss of her. He’d been able to kiss her once, to reach out and touch her smooth skin. Christ, he even missed their swimming lessons. She’d laughed so easily at Stratfield Lake. He hadn’t made her smile in years.

  “Are you going to keep drinking or tell me what happened?” Richard asked.

  Thorne forced his guilt where it belonged: firmly beside the permanent dagger in his heart. The one Alex plunged
into his chest when she left Roseburn. The one he deserved. “What makes you think something happened?”

  Richard stared thoughtfully at his glass of brandy as he rolled it in his palm. “Oh, I don’t know. It might have something to do with an alarmed household of servants summoning me when they discovered their mistress had disappeared and, oddly, taken a carpet with her.” The other man eyed Thorne. “I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that, would you?”

  “Nice carpet, was it?”

  “Who cares? It was expensive. And noticeably absent.”

  Thorne sat back and crossed his legs. “I’ll buy your brother a new one, then.”

  “Damn the carpet,” Richard snapped. “Three days ago you wouldn’t even speak to my sister and now I’ve come to find that she’s spent the night with you. Tell me what happened.”

  Thorne made a noise and polished off his brandy. “Some bastard tried to abduct her out of her bedchamber last night. Because she’s my wife.”

  Richard stood, alarm filling his features. “Say again?”

  Thorne wasn’t about to tell Grey about the murder that preceded Alex’s near-abduction. The last thing he needed was his brother-in-law getting involved when he ought to be fussing over his pregnant wife.

  “A man like me has a lot of enemies, Grey. You ought to know. I made many of them helping you blackmail those toffs in Parliament.”

  The other man grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for. God knows they’d never pass a reform bill out of the goodness of their fucking hearts.”

  A thump from upstairs drew Grey’s attention. “So Alexandra will be staying with you? At the Brimstone?”

  “Just as soon as she gets her clothes. And before you think of getting involved, you’d do well to keep an eye on your own wife. You’ve got enough problems, no need for you to burden yourself with mine.”

  Richard looked angry at that. “You’re my bloody brother-in-law now. She’s my sister.”

  “I’m taking care of it, Grey.”

  “And the man who attacked her?”

  “Dead,” Thorne said tightly. Then, with meaning: “Sorry about your brother’s fancy fuckin’ carpet.”

  He wasn’t about to tell Richard Grey that his sister had killed her attacker. Grey might be an understanding man, but murder had a way of changing the way one looks at a person. It was no skin off Thorne’s hide to imply the death was his; he’d done the dirty deed often enough. Every once in a while, he ought to remind Grey what manner of man he’d allied himself with.

  Grey leveled Thorne with an intent, serious expression. “Just know that if you hurt her again, not only will I stand by and cheer her on whilst she beats the shit out of you, I’ll help her burn your life to the ground.”

  “Duly noted,” Thorne said with a dry laugh. He finished off his brandy and stood. “She’s been up there a while. I hope she’s not bringing her whole bloody wardrobe.”

  Grey directed him to Alexandra’s room, and Thorne left the study. As he pounded up the stairs, he studied the paintings that lined the hallways. Portraits of different ancestors, all related to the Earl of Kent. He wondered how his wife felt, surrounded by reminders of her illegitimacy, of her father’s part in ruining her life. The old Earl was dead—the house and title passed to his heir—but Thorne knew firsthand that death didn’t lessen the pain of memories. It only eased it for a short while.

  The door to Alex’s bedchamber was ajar. Thorne pushed it open and froze at the threshold. His wife crouched in the middle of the room, her fingertips on the bare floorboards. The expression on her face was so bleak that he felt it like a blow. It reminded Thorne of the last time he saw her at Stratfield Saye, on the long drive at Roseburn, when she banished him from her life. Her countenance had been bleak then, too, in the understanding that some things stuck with a person for life. Betrayal, murder, love—they all changed you on some fundamental level.

  He shut the door quietly, but she didn’t look up. “Alex,” he whispered.

  “You can see the blood, can’t you?” she asked him. “It stained the wood.”

  Thorne didn’t see anything. The floor glistened where O’Sullivan and the other lads had cleaned it spotless. The air was redolent with the lemon solution they’d used, freshness meant to mask the stench of a corpse. O’Sullivan had returned exhausted in the early hours of the morning; cleaning up a crime quietly was arduous business. It took patience and skill honed from years under Whelan, when covering up murder was a task they performed often and without complaint. So many times that Thorne had lost count.

  But the number didn’t matter. Thorne, O’Sullivan, the rest of the lads—they all knew killing left its mark on a person. Did it long enough and the rest came easier; but the first? You never forgot the first time you killed a man. That one stuck with you.

  “Alex.” He kept his voice low as he kneeled beside her. “Sweetheart, look at me.”

  She didn’t mind him. Her fingernails scraped along the hardwood as if searching for something, some evidence that only she knew. “I killed him right here,” she whispered. “He had me on the ground, and I grabbed my knife, and I killed him right here.”

  Alex snatched her hand away, curled it in her lap. The sleeve of her dress revealed her inner wrist, where Thorne could just make out the hint of a bruise.

  Christ, but he was some curse, wasn’t he? If it weren’t for him, she would have slept in that bed, safe from danger. She would be writing essays, showing the world her magnificent mind—one a better man deserved. Perhaps she would have given that man her heart, had children if she wanted, travelled across continents and oceans, dazzled everyone she met with a wit Thorne didn’t appreciate enough back in Stratfield Saye.

  Whatever that future held, it didn’t involve marriage to a man she loathed. It didn’t include her gazing down at the floor and picturing a corpse.

  Thorne swallowed back the bitter taste in his mouth and repeated his words. “Alex. Look at me.” He leaned forward and placed his hands on either side of her face. “Please look at me.”

  Her lashes lifted. Were he not holding onto her, Thorne would have felt off balance. She was his anchor. This woman had always been the one thing that kept him grounded to this earth; without her, he’d sink.

  “I wish I could take those memories from you,” he murmured. “But I promise you this, I’ll not let harm come to you. Never again. Do you understand?”

  “No.” She made some movement, but didn’t jerk away from his touch. “I told you that I don’t—”

  “You don’t believe my promises,” he finished for her. “Listen to me, anyway. I’m a bastard for what I did to you. You have every right to never trust me again, because god knows I don’t fucking deserve it. But I will protect you with my life. Understand?”

  At her hesitation, he stroked a thumb across her cheek. He meant it to be a soothing gesture, but it was selfish, too. He had been deprived of her company for over four years. Starved of her touch. He’d take what he could get, he was so hungry for her.

  But when he shifted closer—against his will, for she drew him in like a moth to light—he couldn’t help but whisper, “Remember what I told you back at the Brimstone? I protect what’s mine.”

  Alex jerked away from him and stood. “I’m not yours.”

  Thorne made some frustrated noise. “Then call yourself your own. I’ll offer you protection regardless.”

  Her silence had a weight to it. Her heart was like a walled garden that was too high and impenetrable and impossible to climb. As she looked out the window, her expression was shuttered. She was a fortress of fortified brick and mortar.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was as firm and unyielding as steel. “I need to make something clear to you, if I am to stay at your club. This is not a choice for me. I am doing this for survival. When we find who is responsible for my attempted abduction and Mary’s murder, I will leave.”

  The knife in his chest twisted. “Alex�
��”

  “I’m not finished.” She made some soft noise. “This is not a second chance, Nick. When I walk out the door next time, it will be for good.”

  Thorne didn’t expect her to understand—it was his own fault, after all. She couldn’t trust her memory of Stratfield Saye; every moment they spent together, once held to the light and examined, was suspect. There were too many lies to separate them from the truths, like trying to untangle an intricate knot of rope with no beginning and no end. How could he not have sympathy for her? Hers was an impossible task.

  Of course she couldn’t know that Thorne held no hope for their marriage. He didn’t lie awake at night wishing for second chances, for that was a fucking fool’s errand. Second chances were for different men and difference circumstances. Thorne didn’t wish on stars, either. What stars he could see from the East End were as intangible as her heart.

  Thorne dealt in simple truths: she owed him nothing, and he owed her everything.

  And the truth? He owed her that, too.

  He slowly approached her. Alex tensed, as if preparing for battle. He would have bet the money in his pocket that her pulse was as quick as a songbird’s caught in a pair of hands. Perhaps she expected him to lay some claim on her. To remind her of the vows they made in Gretna, and the register they signed as proof.

  But he wasn’t like a child in the Nichol, about to cage a bird just to hear it sing. Caging something untamed always killed it quicker.

  “I let you go before,” he said, “and I won’t stop you from leaving again. It’s not my way. But you ought to know a few things before you walk out that door one last time.”

  Her breath came out in a slow exhale. “Like what?”

  “It wasn’t all lies,” he said softly.

  Chapter 10

  Stratfield Saye, Hampshire. Four years ago.

  Alexandra was nervous when she left Roseburn.

  She promised to meet Nick at the lake for their first swimming lesson, and while she relished the thought of seeing him again, meeting him alone was a risk. If anyone knew . . . if anyone saw . . .