Delightfully Dangerous (Knights Without Armor Book 1)

by Marly Mathews

  “I know.” Richard bit his tongue. He could not tell Alex the truth. It wasn’t his truth to tell.

  “You can leave my house, or rather, my father’s house. You can exit my life like you did before, and allow our only contact to be purely professional. You need to get out of this spy business, Tisbury. We all do. Our lives as special agents are best left in the past. None of us can move on with our real lives until we give up this damned life. Release Reeves from whatever bond he has to you. Cut the ties, and our slate shall be clean.”

  “I shall consider it.”

  “You’ve always been a puffed up popinjay. You think yourself high above others, and you don’t give a damn for their feelings.”

  “Of course I do,” Richard said roughly.

  “You could have fooled me. You have that stiff upper lip thing down to a science. You are as hard and as unyielding as a statue. I do not think you even possess a heart and we all know you’ve adopted a coward’s constitution.”

  “Are you trying to rouse a challenge out of me?” Richard asked.

  “Lady Lydia Radcliff seems to believe you need a protector. She wanted to enlist my services for that job. I politely declined.”

  “Lydia has been here?”

  “She’s still here.” Mandeville studied him closely for his reaction. He for his part seemed quite delighted.

  “She’ll land herself in a scandal by calling on you.”

  “I do not think the lady cares much at this point. She’s desperate to save you from Reeves’s flying fists.”

  “She will never believe in me.”

  “To be fair, you haven’t given her much choice in the matter. You’ve decided to act like such a coward that now people have started to believe you are one. You cannot easily change such an opinion. She’s a dear, sweet lady, and any man would be lucky to have her as his wife. It is quite unfortunate that she is madly deeply in love with you. I have never seen such devotion in all of my life.”

  “That’s not how she behaves around me.”

  “Women are contrary creatures. What they display to others and what they feel inside can war with each other.”

  “Is she still here? She must be. You mentioned having another caller.”

  “I think you should leave posthaste, Lord Tisbury. Do not distress her any further.”

  “Distress her?”

  “You should go back to the country. We both know you will not fight Reeves. Pip shall fight him in your stead.”

  “Pip will be killed.”

  “Jack won’t kill Pip. He shall only thump him good.”

  “And you are fine with that?”

  “In order to reach his potential Pip must endure a few defeats. I will eventually turn him into the next Daniel Mendoza.”

  “He is no Daniel Mendoza, and he never will be. If you think that, you’re more of a fool than I gave you credit for.”

  “If he turns out to be too nervous to fight Reeves, I will step in for him, I do not expect you to understand, your lordship, but some of us men like to act like men.”

  “I think I do. You both think that I hide behind my plots and plans. That I embrace having others do my work for me.”

  “I think you hide behind all of your men, yes. You retreat to the country and allow us to carry on your work while you laze about and live the life of an indulged lord. You make me sick, and you disgrace the memory of all who died for your ideals.”

  “They are not just my ideals. They are also Britain’s ideals.”

  Mandeville shrugged his shoulders, and looked away from him. “You have two choices, sir. You can run away, or you can become what you were once were—a knight without armor who could face any foe and emerge triumphant.”

  “You want me to go and beat your friend into a right and proper pulp?”

  “I think it would do you both a world of good. It might put to rest some of the demons that haunt Reeves, and I know it would destroy the demons that war inside of you. It might also win you the fair lass’s hand, and she is precious beyond all measure. Despite her love for you, you still must show her that you need no protector. She, too, likes her disguises.”

  “So you know.”

  “I always knew she wasn’t what she appeared to be. I’d have to be a witless fool not to see through her disguise. Fortunately, there are a lot of men who are witless fools, Pip and Lord Eden included.”

  “So you didn’t always know she was Lady Lydia Radcliff.”

  “Not at first. Once I saw her riding out in Hyde Park with her brother, I knew. She rather stands out in a crowd and if I did not believe myself to be a blight upon women, I would fight you for her affections.”

  “I knew you would prove to be my biggest adversary.”

  “Even if I tried to win her away from you, I doubt I could. She’s entirely devoted to you. Bewitched and besotted.”

  “Hardly,” Richard snorted. “I’ve done a lot to destroy whatever love she ever felt for me.”

  “Aye, you’ve been a bastard. A cad of the highest order. But…she still loves you. Even I could not sway that and I did my best to test her just now.”

  “I should like to see her.” Richard stood up and started toward the door, only to find Mandeville blocking his path.

  “I already told her to go home. I do not think you should see her before tonight. She is willing to do whatever it takes to stop the fight. She begged me to fight in your stead. I do not know if I should admire her for that or be sad because you’ve placed her in such a situation.”

  “I have done no such thing.”

  “Every time you refuse to be who you really are, you betray both yourself and Lady Lydia. I heard about your defeat at the hands of Lord Chorley. We both know you should have been able to thrash the little upstart, and you took the coward’s way out.”

  “I did not. I did not want to badly wound the man.”

  “You’ve always been keen on showing self-restraint before. You just didn’t want to set aside the finely crafted life you’d made for yourself. You left the old Tisbury once Napoleon was defeated. You decided that a coward’s life was the easier route. Perhaps you believed it to be your best form of self-punishment. After all, you led many men and women to their deaths.”

  “Devil take you, Mandeville. Move aside.” He shoved Mandeville to the side.

  “Would you like to fight now, Tisbury?” Mandeville asked.

  Richard was about to respond when the door to the study creaked open. The old butler stood teetering on the edge. “You have another caller, Master Alex. Mr. Jonathan Reeves is here to see you.”

  “Damnation,” Mandeville muttered, just before Reeves sauntered into the room.

  “I shan’t stay long,” Jack drawled out. “I only came to see you, and now that I see Lord Tisbury is here, I shall be saved having to deliver a message to his residence.”

  “What do you want, Jack?” Mandeville asked sighing. “You’re too smoky by half.”

  “I shall leave you two lovebirds alone. I will escort Lady Lydia from this place,” Richard said.

  “She’s already been whisked away and I must admit she is quite the tempting armful. Imagine my surprise when I found her attempting to sneak out of your house, Mandeville. Have you had a bit of fun with the lady as well? Or did she come here to profess her devotion to this son of a bitch?”

  “She came here to beg me to fight you in Tisbury’s stead.”

  Reeves let out a bellowing laugh that made Richard wince. “Ah, now, that is amusing.”

  “What have you done with Lady Lydia?” Mandeville asked. Richard wasn’t staying as calm as Mandeville. Right now, Richard felt like tearing Reeves apart.

  “I’ve merely used her as my insurance to see that you do what is required of you, Lord Tisbury. I do apologize if I’ve offended you, Alex, old chap.”

  “I trust you do not intend to harm her.”

  “My men are taking her to a comfortable room in a hotel as we speak. They know if they touch her, I sh
all kill them.”

  “What hotel?” Richard growled.

  “Ah, now, I never tell my secrets,” he said with a wink.

  “If you don’t tell me where she is, Mandeville shall know all.”

  “I do not care. In fact, I was on my way here to finally lighten the load I carry, sir. I shall not have you dangling the truth over my head any longer. However, if I am to be honest and make a clean breast of it, then, I must tell you both that you are ignorant to the truth.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mandeville asked wearily.

  Sobering, Reeves looked between them. “I thought I’d be able to act my way through it, but no amount of bravado can prepare one for what I have to say.”

  “Spit it out,” Richard said, imagining ways to make Reeves suffer.

  “We were in Northern Spain encamped with a band of guerrillas gathering intelligence on the movement of French troops. Wellington was preparing to lay siege to the fortress of Burgos. All was going according to plan, until everything went spectacularly wrong. I’d gone out hunting for that night’s dinner and when I returned to the camp, death awaited me. The Spanish patriots were lying in pools of their own blood, and Maria was sitting calmly by the fire reading a letter. When she heard my approach, she seemed quite ill at ease. I knew then, that…that…our dear Maria the lady who had been daring enough to go undercover as a man for most of her missions, was in fact, loyal to the damn French. It was enough to make my blood run cold. Here I was staring at the face of a monster. She was the living embodiment of all our nightmares. Her game was up, and she knew it. I’d never seen such a beastly look in anyone’s eyes before. She’d enjoyed what she’d done. For one brief second, I was terrified.”

  Richard looked between the men. Alex looked as if he doubted Jack’s story, and if Richard had not known better, he would have doubted it as well. If Jack hadn’t had a witness to back up his story, he would have been in deep trouble.

  “What happened next?” Alex asked. Anger lit his eyes.

  “I can tell him what happened next,” Ricard said gruffly.

  “No,” Jack said hoarsely. “I’ve carried this burden for over twelve years. It’s time for me to relieve myself of it.”

  “Why keep it from me in the first place?” Alex said, struggling to keep his voice calm.

  “We didn’t want you to know that you had been…” Richard supplied.

  “Betrayed,” Alex said grimly. “And how would you know what really happened that night, Tisbury?”

  “I was there. I had been due to meet up with them before Wellington pressed on to Burgos. I wanted to see Maria to safety. She had done enough, and had become too important to you—but I knew our little merry group of spies had been compromised.”

  “You suspected me,” Jack said, his lip curling slightly. Richard had turned friends into enemies when Maria had betrayed them all.

  “I did,” Richard admitted. “I never dreamt how wrong I was, and we narrowly avoided disaster because of it. Had we not known about Maria’s duplicity, it would have gone very badly for us. There would have been no retreat for Wellington and our forces, they would have suffered a colossal defeat—one we might not have been able to recover from. Napoleon would have surrounded them with his forces—and it would have been our Waterloo.”

  “What happened to Maria?” The look of thunder on Alex’s face told Richard that he already suspected the truth.

  “She tried to burn the letters. They were the only proof of her guilt—had I not saved the letters, she would have used her considerable means of persuasion and convinced everyone I was the guilty party. As she made to throw the letters into the fire, I leapt into action. I’d been frozen for those first few moments, frozen by the horror of it all. We struggled, and I managed to rip the letters away from her, and in doing so, she attempted to use her dagger against me, and I pushed her away…and…”

  “She fell,” Richard finished. “She fell and hit her head—and the blow killed her.”

  “I see,” Alex said simply, sinking into a chair. “And you, Richard…you allowed me to blame you all of these damnably long years.”

  “I did.”

  “You took the coward’s way out,” Alex said, confronting Reeves.

  “He did no such thing. We both decided to spare you the pain. What Maria had become was unfathomable to us. We feared it might just drive you half mad.”

  “That wasn’t your choice to make. Is that really what you think of me? Believing she had died the way you told me almost did drive me half mad. If I had known the truth, maybe the last ten years would have been different. My mother told me she was a loose woman. My father tried to convince me that she had no honor. I…I was a fool. I was young and stupid. My father told me that time would give me wisdom. He was right. I cannot believe I fell in love with her. My mother once told me that truth made you see the world differently. She was right. They were both right. Gads. I almost drove them away, Richard. Had they not loved me—I probably would have succeeded. I’ve done nothing to deserve this.” He gestured to the study, and scrubbed his hand over his face. Weariness stole across his features. “I must now endeavor to make amends, and assume the life that they always wanted for me.”

  “We were all fools when it came to Maria,” Richard admitted. “She knew how to play us all like a violin.”

  Alex’s face was unreadable now, but his eyes were not. Fire burned within them. He was swallowing thickly, his hands bunched into fists. “You both let me mourn a woman who didn’t deserve my love in the first place.”

  “It was a time of war.”

  “Don’t make excuses for her. She still killed those men in cold blood. What kind of woman could do such a thing? Jack, you even said she looked as if she enjoyed killing. How could I have fallen in love with such a creature? I just thought she loved the thrill of it, she always was delighted by a grand adventure.”

  Sickened by the thought of it all, Richard thought of Lydia. Lydia liked her merriment as well, but Lydia had no dark side to her soul. Now that he reflected upon it, Maria had always had more than just recklessness inside her. She had been able to look upon death and suffering without feeling anything. At the time, Richard had thought it made her an invaluable asset, now…now he wished he’d never seen her. Wished he’d never enlisted her services. How many people had she murdered? Their blood was on his hands, and the thought made him physically ill. Wearily, he sank into the nearest chair.

  “Tell him where you are keeping Lady Lydia,” Alex said, his voice deep, almost broken with emotion.

  “I’ve confessed. That now means I’m a free man. I am no longer Tisbury’s puppet, ready to jump when he pulls his strings. I feel so unburdened.”

  “You’ll never be free,” Alex said. “You’ll always have her death on your hands.”

  “Countless victims had fallen prey to her blade, and you think I should be racked with guilt over that cheap strumpet? She offered to warm my bed on more than one occasion. I bet she even propositioned Tisbury. Is that where you found her, Tisbury, on the streets?”

  “Shut your bone box,” Alex growled.

  “She was a women with no moral fiber, old chap. We thought that was what made her a good spy, and maybe it was—except she was using those skills against us, and we never knew. She was the best out of us all, and she was rotten to the core. And with that I shall take my leave. I’ll see you at the fight later, Richard, and when I do you shall be reunited with your lovely Lady Lydia.”

  Richard wanted to knock his block off. But there were too many hotels to search. In order to secure Lydia’s safety, he’d have to play the game by Reeves’s rules for now.

  “I should want to kill him,” Alex mused, “But I don’t. I feel betrayed but…we all thought we were doing the right thing back then. It was the wars. War twists people into doing things they never thought possible.”

  “I want to kill him.”

  “Thrash him soundly, then. I shall be in your corner, you may d
epend upon it.”

  “I won’t be able to fight him, not while knowing that Lydia may be in grave danger.”

  “He won’t hurt her. He might be a rogue, and to some, he might be a dastardly villain, but he’s just like us when you think about it. I could have very easily been the one to discover my Maria’s treachery, and I doubt I would have reacted any differently. My love for England—my love for England trumped any love I could have had for a…traitor.” Richard felt for the man. He couldn’t imagine what Mandeville was feeling right now.

  If he had to be faced with that decision he didn’t know what he’d do. Knowing the woman you loved was responsible for countless deaths of your fellow countrymen had to be ripping Mandeville up inside, even though he was doing a fantastic job of maintaining his stiff upper lip.

  “How does he know the blackguards he pays won’t? Their sort aren’t exactly the honorable kind.”

  “I know where we can find her. Or at least I have a pretty good hunch about it. Jack has become a creature of habit, which denotes how lazy he’s become, and he prefers one hotel in London above all else. It’s where he lodges when he’s between residences.”

  “What hotel is that, Mandeville?”

  “Mercier’s Hotel. I can take you there.”

  “I know where it is,” Richard grumbled.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t want to see Lady Lydia hurt any more than you do.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  Mandeville looked annoyed, though he remained silent. The sound of someone slowly shuffling into the study made them both turn to look.

  “Master Alexander,” Mr. Arkwright said in his somewhat hoarse voice.

  “Yes, Mr. Arkwright?”

  “Mr. Bird has left the house.”

  “Why?”

  “He ventured out to follow your young lady visitor after she was escorted into Mr. Reeves’s waiting carriage.”

  “Well, there you have it. We must make haste to pursue them.”

  “Do you think you’re up for it, Lord Tisbury?”

  “You bet I am.”