“Stand on the hearthstones. You’re dripping on my carpet.”
He did not immediately obey. Instead he went through the awkward maneuver of tugging off his boots while standing. The boots he put right outside the balcony door. Next, he shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the back of the chair at Morgan’s vanity, then placed the chair several feet from the fire.
“Leaving your balcony door open is not wise, Morgan James.”
“Trapping Aquinas in the house isn’t either, particularly when he longs to go courting.”
Letting Archer Portmaine remain in her bedchamber was a great deal more foolish though, especially when he started unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“Where is your cravat?”
“For this type of call, I don’t usually wear one.”
“That’s why your shirt is black, isn’t it. The better to lurk and skulk on moonless nights. A white cravat would give away your location.”
He pulled his damp shirt over his head and stared at it as it hung in his grasp. “A full moon hangs above the clouds, though we can’t see it for the infernal rain.” He draped his shirt somewhere—Morgan neither knew nor cared where, for she was too busy studying the breathtaking muscular geometry of Archer Portmaine’s half-naked body.
“Are you quite comfortable, Mr. Portmaine?” For Morgan was finding it difficult to breathe evenly.
“I’m quite chilled, also exhausted, neither of which is your fault.” He sank onto the raised hearthstones, and the scent of steaming wool reached Morgan’s nose.
He was weary; she could see it in the lines of his body, sense it in the bleakness of his gaze. He was weary and alone, and she knew what that felt like.
She pulled an afghan off the back of her fainting couch and draped it around his shoulders. When she would have moved away, he wrapped an arm around her leg and rested his forehead against her thigh. “I really am sorry, Morgan.”
This afternoon, he’d gone back to Miss James-ing her, and she’d hated that as much as she’d hated his leering and flirting. She gave in to the temptation to run a hand through his damp hair. “We’ll talk.”
But first she’d pour him a cup of hot tea from the pot under the towel on her night tray. She brought it to him and held it out. With him sitting on the hearth, the moment reminded her of a knight reaching to take a chalice from a lady’s hand.
“Sit,” he said, moving a few inches to the left. “Or perhaps you should lock the door.”
She sat, but the hearth was not wide, and as she lowered herself to the stones, he opened the blanket so it enveloped her too. “The door is locked, though you’re being sufficiently familiar that I must question the wisdom of informing you of this.”
Morgan did not scold him further, nor did she move away. Her guest said nothing, just sat at her side, the tea in one hand, the other hand resting on her shoulder. A shudder passed through him, making the tea tremble in the shallow cup.
“You really are cold.”
“I’ll warm up.”
“And you’ll tell me why you were acting so oddly this afternoon?”
“Why I was acting like an absolute ass?”
She did not correct him.
He drained the teacup and set it aside, then tucked the blanket more closely around them. “When we were at the Braithwaite’s ball, you did not question me too closely about my activities in our host and hostess’s private chambers.”
“It is not my business.” Then too, she’d been far too enthralled with their conversation, a discussion where she’d been invited to talk about things most people regarded as unfortunate, if not downright shameful.
“It is not your business,” he concurred, “and I don’t want it to become your business.”
Under the scent of wet wool, she caught a whiff of something lovely and woodsy—from him. “What you’re doing is dangerous, isn’t it?”
Because they were side by side, because his arm was around her shoulders, Morgan felt him come to a decision before he spoke, a momentary weighing conducted more quickly than thought.
“My present task likely is dangerous. I was supposed to meet a man tonight at the docks. Somebody met him before I did, or possibly he decided it was too dangerous to keep our appointment.”
Dear God. “Was he a friend?”
“An acquaintance of long standing. I knew him years ago… in France.”
She was not going to ask what Archer Portmaine had been doing in a nation with which England had been at war for most of twenty years. Instead, she slipped her arm around his bare, cool back, feeling the last of her irritation with him shift into worry. “I’m sorry, Archer. This is more than a missing necklace or a straying wife, isn’t it?”
He heaved out a sigh then closed his arms around her so she was enveloped in his embrace inside the blanket. “We were followed today in the park.”
He was cool to the touch and bearing bad news, and yet his embrace was a wonderful comfort. “That’s why you took every turning and side path you could, isn’t it? Why you made sure to be seen by all and sundry—even the dairymaids?”
“That’s part of it. His Grace warned me that I must not become entangled with you, at least not until this present difficulty is resolved. I was trying to earn your disdain, if I might be honest.”
“You should have been honest much earlier. Did you think I would not comprehend such a tactic, Archer? And as for His Grace, he meddles only in the lives of people he cares for.”
“He cares for you, Morgan. The entire family cares for you.”
He sounded so tired, so bleak and burdened—who cared for him?
She felt more than sympathy for this man. Her deafness had taught her what it was to carry an entire world of communication around in silence—reactions, questions, joys, observations, all of it stored up in the airless vault of one isolated heart.
And yet, when he’d slain the present dragon, another would rise up to take its place, and his silence would expand to accommodate that one too.
“Some men need danger, they need excitement and risk. It’s how they’re built.” She tried not to make it an accusation or a lament, merely a statement of fact.
“I’m not built that way.”
“You sound sure of this.” And Morgan was also sure he was speaking with his mouth pressed against her temple, a talking kiss.
“I am damned sure of it. I thought I was going to take over the investigations from my cousin, step right into his shoes, but as a solo operation, things don’t run as well. It takes longer to sort through information, longer to gather it. I have no one with whom to parse ideas or air my brilliant and invariably erroneous theories.”
He fell silent, while behind them a log shifted on the andirons. Morgan cast around for something to ask him, something that would let her again feel both the way his mouth shaped words against her temple and the way those words vibrated through his body.
“I should be going.”
No, he should not. “You’ve barely stopped shivering, and you haven’t told me why we were followed.”
“I wish I knew why.”
A non-answer from a man too distracted, tired, or upset to effectively prevaricate. She tightened her hold on him, as if she’d prevent him bodily from leaving. “Don’t speak in riddles, Archer Portmaine. You have some idea.”
This time when she felt him assay risks and reasons, the process took longer. Maybe fatigue was making his brain sluggish, or maybe he wasn’t as indifferent to sharing a blanket with her as he seemed.
“We believe a plot is brewing against the Crown.”
He spoke slowly, each word no doubt dragged forth against the dictates of both training and habit—though he made no move to pull away.
“And the Regent has many detractors.”
“We don’t know if this plot is against Prinny himself—the target might be a high-ranking minister, though I’m damned if I can figure out which one.”
“What about the royal dukes? Aren’t they the
next logical target?”
He shifted away enough to frown at her. “How do you reach that conclusion?”
“Prinny is not in good health, and his wife is past childbearing, even if they could tolerate each other. With Princess Charlotte’s death in childbirth, Prinny’s brothers must assure the succession, but they are not young men. A blow against one of the dukes could have grave consequences for the stability of the government.”
He’d been a handsome, convincing buffoon earlier in the day. Now his expression was deadly serious—and even more attractive. “Your reasoning is sound. Your reasoning is damned sound. Kent’s only daughter is but a few weeks old, and Clarence’s daughter didn’t live a single day.”
“His duchess is rumored to be carrying again.”
She’d surprised him. His reaction wasn’t visible on his face so much as it registered in a lack of expression. “How could you know such a thing?”
“I don’t hear well, but I do listen, Archer Portmaine, and I trundle about with Anna and Her Grace, making endless morning calls where there’s nothing to do but listen.”
A smile started to turn the corners of his mouth up, then his expression shuttered again. “I really must be going.”
“Damn you, Archer Portmaine, you just had an idea. You may leave if you like, but not until you tell me what you were thinking.”
While his brows drew down, and he no doubt cast around for some plausible dodge to placate her, Morgan had an idea. Her idea was wicked, wanton, and everything she’d dreamed of for years in the dim silence of a lonely young lady’s heart. Before she could reason herself out of it—it was a wicked, wanton, wonderful idea—she seized the moment and kissed him.
Three
The evening had reached its middle hours, neither early nor late. The beau monde swilled champagne and arranged adulterous assignations to the strains of the waltz, while the shopkeepers slept snug in their beds, and the whores trolled for custom on the street corners of Covent Garden.
In a club more respectable than prestigious—the address was technically Soho rather than Mayfair—a man sat alone behind the day’s copy of The Times. He was a surpassingly unremarkable man, his age somewhere north of five-and-thirty, though south of five-and-fifty. His hair was medium brown, his eyes medium blue, his height simply medium.
He dressed well but not ostentatiously. A careful observer might have said he looked like a diplomat, and that would have pleased him, for a diplomat he was—among other things. He was fluent in nine languages and competent in six more. His native tongue was French, though in English, his public school accent was flawless, despite the fact that the only academy he’d attended had been run by thugs and strumpets on the docks of Calais.
The young ladies of Polite Society considered him safe; the older women thought of him as a well-mannered fellow, and that would have pleased him too.
He was, at all times, in all languages, well mannered.
He assured himself yet again that every shade was down on each of the room’s four windows. At quarter past the hour precisely, the door to the reading room opened, and a young man of pale countenance and wheat-gold hair admitted himself to the diplomat’s company. The younger fellow was dressed in natty evening attire, to all appearances a scion of the beau monde enjoying an evening on the town.
The diplomat rose with a gracious smile. “You are punctual. Such an undervalued quality in a gentleman these days. May I pour you some brandy?”
“Please.” The young man did not quite stutter, but as he reached for his drink, his hand shook.
“How is your wife?”
“Fine, thank you. Quite in the pink.”
“And your son?”
The young man’s smile was sickly. “Thriving, thriving.”
And well the little shoat might be, for the wife’s propensity for lactation would be the envy of His Majesty’s pet milch cow. This had been verified by a reliable informant on more than one occasion. “Glad to hear it. Shall we sit?”
The younger fellow gave a jerky nod and appropriated a chair with its back to the window. An amateur’s mistake, but tonight was not the time to point that out.
“I gather things did not go well earlier this evening. Perhaps we should discuss it?” The diplomat let the question hang delicately while the young man downed the rest of his drink.
“Things went terribly. The Frenchman showed up, but he wasn’t at all inclined to parlay peaceably.”
“More brandy?”
Another quick nod, so the diplomat brought the bottle over to the small table near the other fellow’s chair.
“I am here to help, you know. Not every assignment will go smoothly, and the people whose interests we benefit will never be able to aid us or acknowledge our contributions. We must rely on each other.”
“I cut him. That fellow, the Frenchie, he pulled a knife, and I was afraid he’d call the watch, and it was awful.”
That the young man was rattled was to his credit. He was a reluctant traitor, after all, so the diplomat adopted his most avuncular tones. “I was proud of you.”
Wary surprise greeted this observation, probably accompanied by the young man’s first inkling that being a spy meant being spied upon. “You were there?”
“I was not about to let you handle this without some support, and under the circumstances, your mistake was understandable.”
“A man is injured, possibly dead, a man who never meant me or mine any harm, and you call it a mistake?”
Scruples were such touching, dreary inconveniences. “He meant you harm. You didn’t imagine that knife, and if you hadn’t thought to come armed yourself, he might well have brought down the authorities. That is the last thing we need.”
“And if he’d cut me? How would I explain that to Lucia?” He scrubbed a hand over his clean-shaven features while the diplomat filled the brandy glass for a third time.
“Your efforts were not in vain, you know. The evening yielded some interesting information.”
The traitor looked up from his drink. “Not from the Frenchie. He hared off without saying more than bon soir. I’ve never known a man to fight so quietly.”
Because schoolboy rows were mostly noise, while the professionals battled in silence.
“And then you demonstrated yet more sound reasoning and took yourself off, to be seen bowing over some hostess’s hand in a far better neighborhood.” To begin drinking the memory of spilled blood and injured scruples into oblivion. “I, however, remained on the scene.”
“What did you find?”
“Not a what, but a whom. Archer Portmaine came along, stealthy as a cat.”
The young man studied his glass rather than drain it. “Portmaine is the pandering idiot I followed in the park.”
Followed with all the stealth of a drunken gorilla. That too was a discussion for another night. “Not such an idiot. I have reason to think he knew the Frenchman.”
“What reason?”
“Merely a hunch.” A hunch resulting from the way Portmaine had sauntered around the block, not once, but three times in the pouring rain. And though the fellow had lingered under the windows of a boarding house for young females, the diplomat had his doubts. “Nothing more than a hunch, one we’ll follow up on.”
“I’d rather not be the one following up, if you don’t mind. You never said anything about this business being deadly. You said I was to attend the usual parties, frequent the clubs, listen in a few card rooms, and await instructions.”
“And tonight, you followed instructions. You were to cozy up to the Frenchman, and he was not cooperative. I can assure you that in the general case, violence and killing, in particular, are frowned upon among those engaged in pursuits similar to ours. It’s messy and can bring down the authorities and the press. Nobody wants that, so killing is understood by all players to be a very, very last resort.”
“Messy?” The poor boy put his head in his hands. “I wish I’d never set foot in that damned hell.”
Such melodrama. The kindest thing to do was deliver a figurative slap to the fellow’s common sense.
“Ah, but you did. Not once, but many times, and each time, your debts grew. If you want a new start on the Continent, my friend, if you want to be on hand to see your newborn son grow to manhood, then the course you’ve adopted is the only reasonable one.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
Oh, they always changed their minds, or tried to. The diplomat did not laugh, did not even smile. “I beg your pardon?”
“I want to go to America. When this is done, I’ll take my wife and son and go to America. The Continent is too close, and I’m bound to be recognized by some dandy making the tour.”
America, of all the barbaric notions… “If that’s your choice, I can only accommodate it.” Provided the journey to America for the young man and his little family started by way of the Low Countries.
***
Archer pulled his mouth away from the houri threatening to make a hash of his wits. “Morgan, for God’s sake, this isn’t—”
She silenced him by virtue of a hand anchored on the back of his head and her mouth sealed to his. He could not get away; he did not want to get away.
His fuse was so short as to be nonexistent, and before his common sense or scruples or some damned inconvenient thing could stop him, Archer scooped Morgan up and carried her to the bed. He settled her on the mattress and blanketed her with his half-naked, damp self.
“Send me away again,” he rasped against her neck. “Scream, threaten me with something dire, Morgan.” He didn’t want her to see this side of him, the side that could take, that could need blindly and selfishly.
“I’m not as innocent as you think, Archer Portmaine, and not nearly done kissing you.” She emphasized her point by spreading her legs and lifting her hips, a maneuver so bold it cut through some of the urgency fogging Archer’s brain.
“Do that again.”
She undulated more slowly this time, and much of the frustration eating at him ebbed away. “Again.”
He curled down to her shoulder, feeling a different arousal awaken and stretch through his veins as she indulged in a voluptuous rhythm. His wanting shifted from the wanting of a man in despair for a possibly deceased friend lost in pursuit of a hopeless goal—a wanting for oblivion—to the wanting of a man for the particular woman in his arms.
Morgan and Archer: A Novella Page 4
