“That is a great many questions.” He tweaked one of the toes on her left foot, tickling.
“It was, and my head felt so full of them that I had to get away. Vauxhall was having a masquerade; my lady’s maid had mentioned it. So I slipped out and . . . and once I was there, I met you.”
Met. Ha. She had done far more than met him. She had flung herself recklessly, passionately, at the Bow Street Runner who had impressed her, during their brief acquaintance, as someone she could rely on. Be honest. Be true. How hungry she had been for something genuine.
He was silent for almost a minute, stroking the sensitive arch of her foot until her toes curled. “That was the day of my brother’s funeral,” he said at last. “My head was overfull too.”
“Your brother who was the guard,” she remembered.
“At the Royal Mint. Yes.”
“I am so sorry for your loss.” She heard it in his voice, the resonance of how it still bothered him.
“And I for yours.”
“They are not to be compared, surely.” She folded her arms behind her head, the better to study him. “You lost a loved one; I lost only my illusions.”
“You lost a person too.”
Oh. Yes, of course she had. A person who had murdered himself rather than . . . what? See the evaporation of all he’d worked for? Rather than return the paintings in the hidden studio? Rather than watch his wife become other than what he’d wanted?
For she was becoming something else, wasn’t she? She was asking questions, and not only of herself. She was making plans, and not only for other people.
“Andrew and I did not have the sort of marriage I expected.” Was she really going to tell him? She had never told anyone before. But his face was open. Listening. He wanted to know everything, he’d told her. “It was a true marriage, but not often. He preferred painted women to the real thing, I believe. Palest skin. Smooth limbs, hairless all over. I did not live up to the art.”
“Those pictures.” Callum’s jaw clenched. “The ones in which he had a ‘private interest.’ Damn the man.”
“I don’t blame myself.” Anymore, she did not say.
For she had, once. Hers wasn’t the sort of body that appealed to Andrew. The hidden room had been proof upon proof again, falling like a blow when she’d thought she was healed from the pain of his suicide. Painted Venuses, flawless and seductive; sweet-faced maidens both innocent and bare-breasted. Perfect in paint, endlessly naked before a lascivious gaze.
“It’s not right to speak ill of the dead,” said Callum. “So I won’t tell you that he was a villain to marry you, knowing he could not treasure you as you deserved.”
He took her toes in his hands, a touch that could have been casual save for the burn in his dark eyes. That look made it intimate, prickling and pleasurable, a reminder of what had passed between them, and what might happen again if she dared.
Did she want to dare?
Of course she did. She had ever since he’d taken her against his chest; ever since, maybe, he had accompanied her to Butler’s flat. Her life took odd turns when Callum Jenks was a part of it, and when it did, he would not be shaken from her side.
“Do you think . . .” She hesitated. “Do you think you might make love to me again?”
He never looked surprised. Ever. “I might, at that. But the circumstances would have to be ideal.”
“Such as?” Her cheeks burned. “I don’t worry about conception. It has never happened for me.”
“It’s always a possibility, though I do take precautions. But that’s not what I was thinking.” Slowly, he rolled up the legs of her odd boys’ trousers. “Before I could make love to you again, I’d have to have a title and a fortune.”
“Do you think so little of me, to suppose that I expect such a thing?”
The right leg was rolled to mid-calf; the left was almost to her knee. “No, Lady Isabel. I think so much of you. You’re a proper widow and the daughter of a marquess, and that’s the sort of man you deserve.”
“I’m not the daughter of a marquess tonight,” she said. “And I’m certainly not a proper widow. I’m a thief.”
“Ah, I can’t go to bed with a thief either. I’m an Officer of the Police. I ought by all rights to drag a thief before the magistrate.” His hands belied his words, stroking the tender skin behind her knee. Dancing over her calves.
“Is that what you are tonight?” He was raising shivers in her, delicious ripples of sensation. “If I’ve laid aside my roles for a while, perhaps you could too.”
“And then who would I be?” He looked serious, when she’d intended to tease him. “If I’m not an Officer of the Police?” The question seemed to trouble him.
She raised herself on one elbow and caught one of his hands, rubbing his calloused fingers with her own. “You’re just Callum. And I’m Isabel.”
“Isabel,” he murmured.
“What we’ve done, we’ve done together. And I hope we’ll do more.” God. She was throwing herself at him—or would be, if her sprained ankle permitted such exuberant movement.
When he met her eyes, he smiled. It was a wry expression, and a sweet one. “Do you know why I helped you tonight?”
“For justice?” she guessed. He shook his head. “Because you find me irresistible?”
“You are not wrong. But I am very good, madam, at resisting things I don’t want to resist.”
“Why, then?”
He looked at where their hands were laced, then wiggled his fingers to knit them more tightly together. “Because I failed Harry. And the law failed Harry. So I know how it hurts to fail, and to feel trapped within the law you thought would save you. I wanted to spare you that.”
She was missing something. “But why?”
He shut his eyes. “I am not the cold man I might seem, Isabel. Nor am I unfeeling.”
“So you did it for me.” Her tone was wondering. “Because. . . you care about me?”
Streets away, in the Duke of Ardmore’s study, Botticelli’s three Graces danced. Wrapped in a sword stick, or maybe smiled upon by Angelica Butler, three much younger Graces made an endless circle.
Antique and new, none of them smiled as they danced.
Amazingly, though, Callum did smile. Not his usual crimp of lips, of duty fighting for control over amusement. This was real. Sharp and sweet and happy.
“I like it when you smile,” Isabel said.
His smile fell away, heart in his eyes—and then his lips were on hers.
Head spinning, she remembered something puzzling. “What about”—she let herself be taken in another kiss—“all that nonsense about wanting to be different?”
“If you don’t want me to be different”—he undid the laces fastening the boy’s shirt she wore—“then I’d be a fool to wish myself anywhere else in the world, or with anyone else.”
“Silver tongue,” she laughed.
“You have no idea.” The flame-gold of the lamplight turned his dark eyes to fire.
This was no stone bench, no stolen moment. They had trespassed in a duke’s house, and the hidden room remained full of other paintings that lacked proper homes. Yet that didn’t matter now: it was night, and this was a bed, and there was nowhere else she ought to be, and nowhere else she wanted to be but with him. Here they could be bared to each other, completely. They could take their time.
“Your ankle.” He eyed it, and many other parts of her too. “Best not to put weight on it.”
“Oh,” she said vaguely, distracted by the slow stroke of his hand beneath her shirt. “Right. We can’t hurt your leg either.”
A feral sort of grin crossed his features. “You’d better get atop me.”
“Atop?” Her face flushed. “Yes, good idea.”
In a hungry fumble of hands and mouths, they kissed, unbuttoned clothing, stripped it off.
There were so many ways he had seen her, and yet he still seemed to tease out something new from her each time. Never had she kissed her way up a man’
s naked body; never had she settled herself over his torso, chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat, flesh to flesh. Two halves of a shell being eased shut. A perfect fit. His skin was warm against hers, the hairs of his chest dark and ticklish on sensitive skin.
“Sure, torture the wounded man,” he groaned. “If you wanted me dead, it would have been less cruel to shoot me again.”
She laughed, then pushed up onto her wrists. Seated almost in his lap—not quite, still an enticing space away—she was bare above him. Like one of Morrow’s pictures, but she was spare in some parts and fleshy in others, and there was hair at her woman’s parts, and—
And Callum had grown impatient with waiting, for he was testing her readiness with one fingertip. Slicking her own excitement over private parts, finding and testing the hard nub of pleasure. A flick that made her gasp, a stroke that made her moan.
“Shhh,” he said. “Silence. Don’t want to draw the attention of the police.”
She pursed her lips together, smothering a laugh. But silence was difficult when he touched her so cleverly, when he lifted his head to capture one of her nipples between demanding lips. A nip of his teeth, and she shuddered and could bear it no more. Rising up onto her knees, she guided him within her. She was tight and he filled her, deeper and deeper as she sank until she was seated fully against him again.
His eyes were startled and wide. She surely looked no less stunned.
“Good God,” he choked. “You feel . . . you are . . .”
“I know,” she said. “I know. You feel, and you are.”
That was the heart of it: they felt, and they were. They were together, and she leaned forward again to take some of her weight onto her hands. Like this, she rocked upon him, letting him slide almost free, then reseating herself to draw a groan from him. He sucked in a hard breath, the muscles of his neck corded and tight, and drove upward with his hips.
“Your mouth,” she gasped. “Use your mouth on me too.”
“Anything you desire.” He curved up, grabbed a pillow and shoved it behind his head to hold him at this wicked angle where he could hold her hips in his hands, could take her nipple between his lips again. He suckled as he guided her, using one hand sometimes to pinch at the other nipple.
She buried her face in his hair, breathing deeply of his scent. Port wine, heavy and sweet; a simple soap; the hot scent of sex. He filled her body, her senses, and there was naught she could do but surrender utterly. As she ground against him, shocks of pleasure sparked, caught, flamed until she was licked all over.
Then there were no more words; nothing from their mouths except kisses, moans, a guttural chuckle when one of them found a new place to kiss or touch. Sweat-slicked and sex-drenched, they drew each other on. Further, tighter, harder, faster, until pleasure was a great crashing wave that swamped them, leaving them gasping in each other’s arms.
Together. As she had in the music room earlier that night, endless ages before, she settled against his chest, tucking her head atop his shoulder. He was the right size to lie on, to lie with. To scheme with, to steal with, to trust, to kiss.
He wrapped his arms around her. Pressed a kiss to her lids, to the top of her head. “I’ve got you,” he said. “Sleep, Isabel. I will stay as long as I can.”
“Longer,” she murmured, drowsy from success and sex, and plummeted into sated dreams.
* * *
When Isabel woke, Callum was gone.
It was for the best, she knew, since her lady’s maid came in at the usual time—just after Isabel hopped across the bedchamber to retrieve a dressing gown, then tied it about herself. Celeste would have been shocked to find a man in her ladyship’s bed. Thoroughly English and proper, the maid was about a decade older than Isabel. They were fond of each other in a quiet way, though Isabel shared no confidences with her as she knew other women often did with their maids. For years, Isabel had not had any confidences to share.
Instead, there was no sign Callum had been there at all. Her boots were tidied away. The blood-soaked shawl and strewn boys’ clothing had vanished. Even the bottle of port was gone—though she must remember to have the decanter washed.
He must have noticed every detail of how her room was, then returned it to the expected state.
“Officers of the Police,” she muttered under her breath. Had she imagined it all? She might almost think so but for the pleasurable throb between her legs, the lamp on her bedside table.
“Your brother is here for breakfast,” said the maid. “And then he will accompany you and Miss Wallace to church. Oh! My lady, you have hurt your ankle?”
Isabel sank onto the edge of the bed, regarding the still-bandaged joint dubiously. “Yes. So clumsy of me; I turned it as I climbed out of bed this morning. I found something to wrap it with. I’m sure I shall be fine soon.”
The flesh was tight and hot this morning, swollen, but not visibly bruised. If she kept it bound well, she might be able to hide the injury. If she had to admit it, she would say again that she’d turned it getting out of bed and would let the world think her a ninny. With Celeste’s help, she dressed in a severe gray gown suitable for a morning church service, then slipped on her loosest shoes.
It was for the best that Callum had left without a word, she told herself again, as she made stilted conversation with Lucy and Martin over breakfast in the morning room—a nod to Martin’s preference, since the women often ate in their own chambers. Though as absorbed as her brother was by the Times, Isabel might as well not have been there at all. So much for his fraternal fondness of the day before.
She pushed her toast and marmalade around, crunching at it between sips of tea and reminiscences of the night before. Already it was retreating into unreality. Perhaps that, too, was for the best.
Just as the meal concluded, Selby glided into the room with a note on a silver tray. “Lady Isabel,” he intoned. “A messenger has brought this for you.”
She thanked him as he withdrew. Her brows knit as she cracked the wax. The seal was familiar as belonging to the Duke of Ardmore.
The letter was a few lines only. His Grace requested the honor of Lady Isabel’s presence as soon as it was convenient, for a business matter of interest to them both.
Toast caught in her throat. Her ankle fired a warning shot of pain. And it was not for the best that Callum was gone, because this note could not be a coincidence. The duke knew, he knew what they had done, and how was she to respond? Callum would have known what to do, but she did not.
She stood, walked to the door, walked back to her chair again. Stop. She must think.
“Something amiss, Isabel?” Lucy was regarding her with some concern.
“Of course not.” She managed a smile. “No. I was merely surprised that the Duke of Ardmore took the trouble to remind me of something I’d forgot at the house last time I called. So kind of him.”
“Oh. I was wondering not because of the note, but because you are limping.”
“Clumsy of me.” Isabel forced a chuckle. “I turned my ankle as my feet first touched the floor this morning.”
“Mmm,” said Martin, clearly not listening.
“I shall call on His Grace after church, I think.” She strove for a casual tone. “Since he was kind enough to send over a note so early.”
Lucy sawed at a grilled kidney. “When we walked out with Lord Northbrook and Lady Selina yesterday, I didn’t notice that you forgot—”
“Douglas.” Isabel interrupted Lucy to speak to the footman at attention beside the sideboard. “If His Grace’s messenger is still here, ask him to wait.”
Already standing straight, Douglas snapped still more upright. “My lady! He departed, my lady, without waiting for a reply.”
Dukes. So sure that everyone would do their bidding. And rightly so.
She sighed. “All right. Then tell Jacoby to have my landaulet readied as soon as we return from church.”
Lucy shoved back her chair, abandoning the remainder of her breakfast.
“Do you want me to go with you? Or Brinley too, so he can get tired?”
“Not this time, dearest. You can stay with Martin. He gets frightened if he’s left alone.”
“Mmm?” Martin’s face emerged over the top of the paper. “What’s that?”
Isabel raised her voice. “I said that Lucy gets frightened if she’s left alone, and you’re to stay and play cards with her while I call on the Duke of Ardmore.”
“Oh, excellent!” Lucy grinned. “I haven’t played cards with you in ages, Martin.”
Martin shot Isabel a disapproving look. “Cards are not an appropriate pursuit on a Sunday.”
“Do not worry,” Lucy said brightly. “You might win this time!”
This was the true reason for his hesitation—and after a moment, he relented. “Only find the cards, Miss Lucy, and I shall be at your service.”
And so, after an hour spent hiding troubling thoughts behind a placid, pious face, Isabel would be at her leisure to visit the Duke of Ardmore. The scene of the crime, she might rather say.
No, she mustn’t say that. Anything but that.
But what would she say in place of the truth?
Chapter Thirteen
Isabel reached Ardmore House at the quiet hour between church and luncheon, when most servants were at services or taking their leisure, and the family of the household was occupied with quiet pursuits. Reading, letter-writing. Music.
She wondered if anyone had yet entered the music room that morning.
Favoring her right ankle, Isabel made slow progress up the stairs. She glared when she passed Titan on the stairs, the cat’s plume-like tail waving with silent arrogance.
She entered the study yet more slowly, though she attempted to look stately. The long dove-gray sweep of her skirts hid her fat bandaged ankle, but the duke’s eyes missed nothing. He rose from the chair behind his enormous desk, extending a staying hand to Gog and Magog, whose hackles had raised upon her entry.
“Do I detect a limp?” His Grace’s blue eyes were hooded. “Dear me. You have hurt yourself, Lady Isabel.”
“Clumsy of me.” She forced a laugh, trying to look, without appearing to look, at the painting centered between the study windows. Had they done well switching it? To her eye—well, to the corner of her eye—it looked the same as the false one had. “I turned my ankle this morning as I was arising.”
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