It was hard to believe this sweet-smelling creature in the darkness had, mere hours before, been arm-deep in the oily innards of a mechanical spit dog. Or, moments ago, broken into a safe to peruse documents that were almost certainly state secrets.
He should be turning her in to her father. Instead he wanted nothing more than to tag along and see what fantastic scheme she’d concoct and enact next. She was better than a penny dreadful. And something in the sound of her silk and lace skirt rustling in the darkness aroused him.
This attitude on his part was, he realized, hardly conducive to a continued career in the service of the Crown. Not that he was sure he wanted one, anyway, given how horribly things were going with Murcheson. He wasn’t sure he could live in a world of constant lies.
In the study, multiple male voices were raised in discussion of racing, with somebody in favor of one popular horse to win an upcoming event, and a vocal opposition speaking the praises of another. Somebody’s groom had dropped hints of a temperamental knee and a secretive visit from the animal surgeon, apparently. Another’s rider had assured him these rumors were balderdash, deliberately spread to throw off the odds. The clink of glassware suggested that the talk was a thin excuse for escaping the soprano and partaking of liquid refreshment.
Freddie brushed closer still, tipping her head up to whisper in his ear. “None of them sound like Father. If we both try to leave through the parlor door we might get caught. Probably safer to stay put and hope they decamp soon so we can leave as we came in.”
He inclined his head to return the whisper. “This is all a world of madness, but as you’re clearly mad too I suppose you’re in your element. I’ll defer to your lunatic judgment.”
“Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying yourself.”
He was enjoying himself rather too much. She was so very close, and it was such a small space.
“You’re a very exciting girl, Miss Murcheson.”
A soft puff of air crossed his cheek and ear, perhaps a laugh. It set every inch of his neck tingling.
“Men usually say things like that only when they intend to become a good influence on me.”
“I think you’re far beyond my influence. And besides, I don’t fancy my women in trousers.” This was a blatant lie but seemed an appropriate assertion to make. He really wasn’t supposed to fancy anything in trousers, was he?
“I’m in a skirt right now. And you take things too seriously for a man so young, Lord Smith-Grenville.”
“Call me Barnabas.” He should have invited her to call him Smith-Grenville. He’d skipped a step. Too late to take it back now, though. He wanted to hear her say his name.
“I will in a minute.”
Her vision in the dark must have been better than his. She found his lips with no trouble at all and pressed a lingering kiss there. He was so shocked he almost didn’t respond at first, but just when it seemed she might pull away he recovered himself and kissed her back.
It was clear from the start that one kiss would never be enough; they would need to do more of this and do it often. It was also clear that neither of them had any idea what they were doing. A great deal of awkward nose-bumping and tooth-knocking transpired before Freddie shifted her head to one side and Barnabas countered just so, and—bliss, heaven, a paradise of velvet lips in a sensual tussle in which no contender could ever possibly lose. Freddie sighed into his mouth, and Barnabas realized he would never be able to hide his erection when they left this magical cupboard. He was reacting to her like a schoolboy, a green lad, a . . . oh, sweet heavens, is that her tongue?
Yes, it was.
He met her move for move, catching up to her pace, exploring her mouth as if he might never have another chance. Warm and soft, and almost painfully intimate. He realized, when he ran the tip of his tongue along their edges, that her teeth were perfection. Strange it had taken knowing them this way for him to become aware of that simple fact. Teeth, tongue, lips, all of her, perfection. Kissing her felt like coming home at last, but finding that home was some wonderful new place straight out of his most secret dreams. He would have happily spent all day at it, but Miss Murcheson pulled back woefully soon.
“Barnabas,” she whispered, to his delight.
“Freddie . . . I hope I may call you Freddie?”
“Of course you may, don’t be ridiculous. Only when we’re alone, though. This is extremely ill-advised, you do know that?” She actually sounded flustered for the first time since he’d met her, though that might have been a side effect of the whispering.
“Oh, yes. Possibly the worst idea in the history of romantic encounters.” Her father would probably change his mind about that hanging if he found out, and have Barnabas drawn and quartered instead, for one thing. He needed to distance himself, no mistake. “When can we do it again?”
“I don’t know. I think they’re gone, by the way.”
“Who?”
She pushed against his shoulder, a gentle reprimand for his lack of attention. He caught her hand and held it there. “The men in the study. I believe they were primarily interested in raiding my father’s private stock of liquor while he was detained by his duties as host.”
“That’s shocking.” He brought her hand to his mouth, feeling his way kiss by kiss across her silk-clad knuckles, then turning it over to press his lips to her palm. “Absolutely shocking.”
“Barnabas, we need to leave now,” she reminded him. “We can’t be caught canoodling in the wall.”
“Canoodling?” He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard anyone actually say the word aloud. “A Smith-Grenville does not canoodle, madam.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Now go. And be thinking of a good plan.”
He’d missed something, obviously. It was possible his brain was not functioning optimally. “A plan to kiss you again?”
“No. Well, if you like. But I meant a plan to help me steal the Gilded Lily from Father’s secret underwater base, so I can use it to track down the smugglers. As I said the other day in the park, if I prove to him that I can do this—especially succeeding where he’s failed—maybe he’ll finally accept that I can take care of myself, and then I can stop all this sneaking about. No more monitors, no more double life. I can finally just live.”
She framed his face with her hands and deposited another all-too-swift kiss on his startled lips, then slipped out of the cupboard on the parlor side.
He took longer than he should have to compose himself before exiting through the study. The aria was over, and the guests were beginning to depart the salon. Murcheson spotted him leaving the room and pinned him with a glare from down the corridor.
Barnabas tried to think of something, any plausible reason to have been in Murcheson’s study. Anything other than perusing the man’s confidential documents and making love to his daughter in the secret closet. His mind was a lamentable blank, however. All he knew was fear as the man bore down on him.
“Have those bastards been at my private stores again? Happens every time I invite this many people and get caught up with the other guests. Don’t let them rope you in again. Anything to report, Smith-Grenville?”
He didn’t look very interested in the answer. His eyes were already cutting to the side, to the next conversation he planned to hold. Cold relief swamped Barnabas from head to toe. “No, sir. Just the odd jaunt to Wallingford House. I believe Lady Sophie is a wonderful steadying influence on Miss Murcheson.”
“Hmm. She steadied poor Thomas Wallingford right into an early grave. Still, Frédérique seems to have learned some manners from the woman. She’s seen no one else? No suspicious strangers lurking about?”
Down the hall, Freddie caught his eye, her face full of dismay. Her lips and cheeks were decidedly pinker than they had been earlier in the evening, he was sure of it. Barnabas forced himself to look away. “No, sir. It’s all been quit
e uneventful.”
“Good. Let me know if anything changes. Well, carry on, Smith-Grenville. Carry on.”
“Yes, sir.”
Murcheson strode off. Barnabas ignored Freddie’s effort to gain his attention again and made his way down the hallway and to the stairs, pressing his fingers to one temple as though suffering a headache.
Once in his room, he closed the door firmly behind him, leaning back against it as though trying to hold back everything on the other side.
He had kissed a woman. Very much the wrong woman. He had lied to her father, his employer, a man who could throw him in prison or have him hanged for treason. He had given Freddie every reason to believe he would go on lying, and kissing her. Canoodling.
What’s more, he was no longer certain he wanted to work for Murcheson at all. But leaving the agency’s employ would mean leaving Freddie as well, a prospect he looked upon with dread.
What the hell was he doing with his life? He could be at home in the New York Dominion, living a life of ease and privilege, learning to take over the affairs of the family estate like he must one day do. But his father was still hale and hearty, his brother was still missing, and . . . he wanted something. Something he could taste on Miss Freddie Murcheson’s sweetly inappropriate lips. She tasted like adventure. Barnabas realized that Freddie, with her ostensibly circumscribed life as an unmarried girl, had managed more adventure in her twenty-one years than he had as a wealthy bachelor only a few years shy of thirty. He found her completely baffling and absolutely delightful in equal measure. Lately, perhaps, the balance was tipping in favor of delight.
Barnabas’s restless mind propelled him across the room, to stop in front of the trunk Murcheson had sent up to him. Phineas’s things, which he hadn’t had time to look through. Phineas had left the key with his landlady—was he that trusting, or had he censored the contents of the trunk that carefully?—and it was tied to one of the handles with a bit of twine.
A sartorial passion for tool-concealing clockwork lapel flowers had spread to Europa, and Barnabas wore one that night. It was an enameled rosebud, with leaves that twisted in various ways to reveal several useful attachments. He used the smallest blade to cut the key loose and opened the trunk after a moment of trepidation at what he might find. Opium paraphernalia, or damning correspondence. The remnants of a life wasted, the pieces Phineas hadn’t even bothered to take with him.
The top of the trunk was covered by an inset tray, and it contained exactly the sort of keepsakes one might expect from a young man. A few school medals tucked into a woolen mitten, a small tin of smooth rocks that Barnabas recognized from the stream they’d played in every day as children. Skipping stones. There were also half a dozen books, one of which Barnabas recognized as his own; Phineas had borrowed it and evidently never remembered to return it. It might well have been meant as a message of some sort, but if so he wasn’t sure of the meaning.
“The Sorrows of Young Werther. Really, Phin, who would have thought you had a melodramatic side?”
In a carved wooden box, he found a stack of paper. Tickets, theatre programs, invitations, a handful of visiting cards. A few letters.
“Lady Sophronia Howard,” he read, from the outside of one envelope. It had been addressed to her but either never delivered, or returned with the seal unbroken. Barnabas replaced it in the box, unread.
Lifting the tray away, he stared into the depths of the trunk and thought instantly of Freddie. Or rather, of Fred.
Phineas had left behind his uniforms, rank insignia, even his spit-polished shoes. Everything one might need if one wanted to walk right into a secret undersea naval base.
TEN
SHE WOULD HAVE rather gone in her gown than in a night rail. That would have drawn suspicion, however. Freddie had needed a maid to help get the elaborate gown off, and the maid had already laid out the nightclothes. So she felt more exposed, yet also less constrained than usual as she crept up the stairs from one floor of the silent house to the next. The one where Barnabas was staying.
This was all very unlike her. She had to wonder if part of the attraction was the sheer convenience of this man who couldn’t tattle on her, with whom she was bound in a mutual embrace of lies. It made him curiously safe. Then again, there had been nothing safe about the way she’d tingled all the way down to her toes when they finally managed to get the kissing straightened out. The bit with the tongues had been an especially pleasant surprise, an accident on her part that had turned out astonishingly well. And Barnabas was definitely forbidden fruit, which had an allure all its own.
He might not want to let her into the room, of course. He was an honorable thing, and probably had a lot of notions of propriety and appropriateness impeding his judgment. All the ideas that Freddie’s string of governesses had tried so hard to drum into her as a child. But if she led with something innocent, like a discussion of ways to steal the Gilded Lily and what they might do with it once they’d secured it, she could surely talk her way into the room. And once the door was closed, anything might happen.
She scratched for entrance, servantlike, and heard some rustling and knocking before Barnabas opened the door. He was still in his trousers and shirtsleeves, no ascot, collar open. Not formal, not rough—nascent undress. This was definitely the version of his wardrobe she liked best. Freddie was seized with a sudden, inexplicable urge to lick the long, vulnerable column of Barnabas’s throat. She had to remind herself she’d planned to start with business.
“What the devil are you doing here?” he half-whispered, half-screeched, obviously panicked to find her on his threshold. Without another word he gripped her arm and jerked her into the room, checking the corridor before closing and bolting the door. “You can’t be here, Freddie.”
“You just locked me in,” she pointed out. “I wanted to talk about our plan.”
Barnabas looked shifty. “Plan?”
“To steal the submersible,” she said slowly, as if to a dimwit. “Here we can talk without having to whisper. Nobody else is housed nearby at the moment. This floor doesn’t see a lot of use since my mother elected to remain in France. We don’t have nearly as many houseguests as we used to.”
“Ah, yes. She’s French herself, I take it?”
She nodded. Sometimes Freddie felt as though her mother were France itself. “Yes, and very proud to be so. She supported the Égalité government during the war long before they overpowered the post-royalist faction, and her family were among the many exiles in London. But I’ve always gotten the distinct impression she hated all things English other than my father. We moved to Le Havre for Father’s business shortly after the treaty was signed, and she’s never been back here.”
“Not even for your first Season?”
“Especially not then. It was Father who insisted on my coming out in London. He placed me under the care and tutelage of my aunt Lydia, who promptly foisted me off on my dear friend Sophie. Sophie had spent a year with our family in Le Havre before her own debut, in lieu of finishing school, and she and I got along together quite well.”
“You taught her to pick locks?”
“Indeed I did. And I added a great deal to her French vocabulary. Things I doubt she would have picked up had she gone to one of the fine Swiss institutions for producing young women of quality. But I didn’t come here to discuss Sophie’s education.”
“The submersible. You can’t really mean to steal it?”
He glanced behind him again, at a trunk sitting open near the foot of his bed, then back at Freddie. He really was the worst at subterfuge. He might as well have erected a marquee over the trunk, directing her attention to it.
“Borrow it, rather. Since it’s obvious Father’s people aren’t getting good use from it anyway. I fully intend to return it without getting caught. Somehow. What’s in that trunk?”
“Nothing.”
She could see
some books, a swath of dark fabric, some sort of wooden box. Nothing spectacular on first look, but if there was nothing interesting in it, why was he being so secretive?
“People only say ‘nothing’ when they mean it’s something but they don’t want to say what.”
“I believe I had this same conversation with my brother more than once. When we were schoolboys.”
“Touché.”
“You shouldn’t go nosing into other people’s things, you know.”
“I already said touché. No need to belabor the point. Nobody likes a scold, Barnabas.”
“I shall endeavor to be less didactic, Freddie.”
They’d said each other’s names. For a moment they could only stare at one another, smiling, mired in the treacle pull of calf love. Freddie felt that odd little pull in her tummy, the stirring of things below there, and a delicious sense of daring that seemed entirely at odds with the man she’d so recently thought of as bland and puddinglike. Here in his room late at night, with her in her night things and him with his collar hanging open, he seemed anything but bland. He was raw and real and just as on edge as she was, by the look of things. She had no idea what to do or say next.
“This,” he gestured, breaking eye contact first, “is my brother Phineas’s trunk. He left it behind when he disappeared into the wilds of the Dominions. There’s nothing much of interest in it. Just keepsakes, that sort of thing.”
Freddie stepped past him and stared down at the contents. “That looks like—”
“His uniforms, yes. He left those as well.”
“But if we had Navy uniforms, we could simply walk into—”
“No, we couldn’t, because they would catch us and hang us. Which is why I didn’t particularly want you to see them.”
Freddie held up various pieces of the uniform gear, noting some older, slightly more worn garments in addition to those that looked more recent and possibly larger. Phineas had grown after receiving his commission, it appeared. It was serendipity. Her mind was already spinning out the scenario. “Mrs. Pinkerton can tailor one of these down for me. My hair will never fit under this hat, though. Were you and Phineas roughly the same size?”
Gilded Lily Page 10
