Lady Rogue

by Suzanne Enoch

He forced a careless smile, trying to make himself breathe again. “You’re welcome, brat.”

  Chapter 5

  When Kit came across a sterling multicaped black greatcoat that fit to perfection, she expected it would be a difficult, if not impossible, task to persuade Alex actually to purchase it for her. Before she could begin, though, and without even inquiring about the price, Everton simply told the shopkeeper to send him the bill, and she took it away with her.

  It was the same with the haberdasher, and with the white kid gloves she wanted, simply because she’d never owned a pair so fine. Her father would applaud her taking advantage of a weak-minded peer, and that would be how she explained her new things to him—but the reality was far more complex. She was pushing Everton, waiting for him to put a condition on the purchases. There was always a condition. She knew the game, for she’d seen it over and over from the men she associated with in Paris. Posies and perfumes were to melt a girl’s heart or her sensibilities, while diamonds and jewels were to win the way into her bed. Kit glanced at Alex’s profile as they strolled along Bond Street. She didn’t know what, exactly, coats and hats were meant to gain him. Despite the growing number of purchases, he hadn’t asked for anything. He’d laughed off their quick kiss, and with the number of mistresses he’d apparently had, no doubt it meant nothing to him. She’d spent the morning trying to convince herself that neither did it mean anything to her.

  She glanced up the street to see which shops remained, and froze.

  Immediately Everton stopped beside her. “What is it?” he queried, his usual veneer of amused ease sliding into the alert intensity she’d sensed in him the night they met.

  “Oh, nothing,” she returned, forcing a chuckle. It couldn’t have been Jean-Paul Mercier watching her from the corner, because the Comte de Fouché was in Paris spouting off about how splendid Napoleon’s reforms were. “Is that a sweet shop?”

  Alex looked toward the corner, then turned back, studying her face with eyes that could not quite hide the self-assured intelligence lurking behind them. “I am here to protect you, you know,” he murmured. “You may trust me.”

  For a moment she wished she could. She wanted to trust someone. She wanted to trust Alexander Cale. He might even understand that she and her father were merely trying to make a living, had simply taken a step or two out of their depth, and were trying to stay alive. He might even help her find the lord she was after, if he found the idea amusing enough. And he might not. She sighed and turned away. “Protect me from what, rotted teeth?” she said, glancing at the corner again. Fouché, if he had ever been there, was gone.

  Alex sighed as well. “What else could I possibly be referring to?”

  The question didn’t sound quite rhetorical, but she ignored it. “Where shall we go next?” she asked as they reached his phaeton.

  “I have meetings,” he returned, and she scowled at him, disappointed.

  “Who are you, the prime minister?” she retorted. All the meetings he attended certainly sounded suspicious, but she had scoured the mansion twice now during his absences, and other than the blasted map and coins, had found nothing to suggest that he was involved with Prince George’s blockade, or with any sort of government activity at all. In another sense entirely, it was almost disappointing to find him so purposeless. She could believe it of someone like Francis Henning, but Francis didn’t maintain one of the finest private libraries she’d ever heard of, and Francis hadn’t been in her dreams for the last few nights.

  “Hardly,” he replied, gesturing her up into the carriage. “I am a member of the House of Lords, however.”

  “I thought rakehells never performed their civic duties,” she said, watching him climb gracefully up beside her.

  “I make it a point to be late to all civic and social functions,” he noted dryly, his glance at her amused. “The more conventional blue bloods find me quite annoying.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Father says all blue bloods are worthless.”

  He raised an eyebrow as he clucked to the team. “You’re a blue blood yourself, my dear.”

  “Shush,” she admonished, glancing about again. “I am not.”

  “You’re the Duke of Furth’s niece. You’re so blue, you’re azure.”

  Like your eyes, she thought abruptly, then took a quick breath and looked away. “I claim no relation to that man.”

  She felt him look at her, but he said nothing.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me why?” She frowned, annoyed at his apparent disinterest, even though he already knew far too much about her.

  “None of my affair,” he answered, pulling out his pocket watch. He glanced down at it, then slipped the watch back inside his waistcoat and urged the team into a canter.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she said indignantly, folding her arms. “I have no wish to bore you, of course.”

  “Are you going to call me some name in French now?” he queried, pursing his lips but still not looking at her.

  She actually was considering several choice epithets, when they were hailed by a vehicle on the other side of the street.

  “Alexander!”

  A white, heavily powdered wig, ten years out of style, was perched perilously over a pair of blue eyes and a waving, monogrammed handkerchief. The femininely gesturing arm was attached to an elderly, formidable-looking woman of such considerable bulk that the other occupant of her barouche was invisible but for a patterned blue muslin skirt.

  “Devil a bit,” Alex muttered under his breath. “Good morning, Lady Cralling.”

  “I’ve told you to call me Eunice, silly boy,” Lady Cralling tittered.

  “Eunice, of course,” Everton replied, favoring the woman with a dazzling smile.

  Kit stared at him. It was simply glorious, the way he looked when he smiled like that, but this close she could see that his eyes remained cool and vaguely annoyed. The expression confirmed what she had suspected all along: that he was likely a blistering cardplayer, and the other evening he had only been amusing himself with his cronies. It seemed they could both keep secrets. She wondered again what his might be.

  They would have continued on, but the hay cart in front of them lurched to a stop as an orange girl ran out into the street to offer the driver her wares. Lady Cralling likewise thumped the floor of the barouche with her walking cane, and to the annoyance of the line of vehicles behind them, her driver pulled up as well.

  “Say hello, Mercia,” the woman commanded.

  A pale, slender young woman, perhaps a year younger than Kit, sat forward and looked across at them from beneath curling black eyelashes. “Good morning, Lord Everton,” she said in a whispery, delicate voice.

  “Good morning, Miss Cralling,” Alex answered, tipping his hat. He elbowed Kit in the ribs, and she followed suit. “Eunice, Miss Cralling, my cousin, Christian Riley.”

  “Kit,” Christine put in, lifting one foot up against the phaeton’s frame and resting her elbow on her bent knee. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, ladies.”

  “Mr. Riley,” the trace of a voice came again, and Kit nodded politely.

  “Alexander, you are coming to the Fontaine rout tonight, are you not?” Lady Cralling asked, blinking her lashes so rapidly, Kit thought she must have something in her eye, before she realized the woman was flirting with Everton.

  “I have been considering it,” Alex offered reluctantly, glancing forward at the hay cart again. His long, elegant fingers twitched as they held the leather reins. He was obviously itching to send the team into a gallop and make an escape. Kit stifled the urge to laugh at him.

  “And you, Mr. Riley, will you be attending?” Mercia Cralling asked with a sweet smile.

  “Of course,” Kit answered, grinning. Compared with her mother, Miss Cralling was the very soul of subtlety.

  Alex’s jaw tightened, though he otherwise made no movement. He would be angry and would say she was making an annoyance of herself again, but if she didn’t take matters into h
er own hands, she might as well stay up in Everton’s attic with his discarded furniture for the next ten days. And she had no intention of doing any such thing.

  Finally the orange girl dashed back out of the street, and Everton doffed his hat at the ladies and urged his team forward. “Damn it, chit, you will stop doing that!” he exploded as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “Oh,” she said, batting her eyes and mimicking Mercia Cralling’s soft, cultured tones, “my sincere apologies, of course, Lord Everton.”

  He whipped his head around to stare at her. “Good God,” he said equally softly, an unsettled expression entering his eyes, “you are a female.”

  “You’d forgotten, I suppose?” she replied, lifting an eyebrow.

  He gazed at her for another moment, then faced forward again. “A thorn as sharp as you is difficult to overlook, brat.”

  “Ah. So why do you put up with me?”

  “One of my few attempts at propriety.”

  She glanced up at his profile. The morning breeze sent a lock of his hair straying across his eyes, and absently he lifted a hand to brush the dark strands back from his face. Kit looked away, stifling the dismaying urge to trace the curve of his ear with her fingertips. “Is Miss Cralling another mistress of yours?” she asked instead. “Were you afraid I’d steal her heart?”

  His scowl deepened. “I don’t bed schoolroom chits,” he said, glaring at her, “chit.”

  “You are pledged to protect my virtue, anyway,” she returned, sitting back with her arms crossed, pretending not to be flustered. Everton was damned distracting.

  He snorted. “You sound as though you think me a Galahad.”

  “No,” she replied, looking at him hopefully. “But I do think you should let me go with you to the Fontaine rout tonight.”

  He frowned again. “No,” he said flatly.

  “Blast it, Alex, why not?”

  “Because I said no.”

  She tried to decipher whether or not he was bluffing. Defying him flat out would only get her asked to remove herself from his premises. She could go elsewhere, but now that she’d made herself his cousin, changing locales would be difficult to explain to the rest of the nobility. Besides, she wasn’t ready to leave magnificent Cale House, with its fascinating occupant. “Oh, all right,” she grumbled. “Vieillard étouffant.”

  The Earl of Everton cleared his throat.

  “Stuffy…old…man,” she translated, enunciating each word to make certain he understood.

  Lord Everton nodded. “I’m still young enough that I could take you over my knee, cub.” He turned the phaeton onto Park Lane.

  She folded her arms. “Oh, I imagine you’d enjoy that,” she responded, covering her amusement at the epithet with a scowl.

  He grinned wolfishly at her. “You have no idea.”

  As the white walls of Cale House appeared, she jumped. She’d nearly forgotten she was to meet her father. “Oh, did I remember to tell you, I’m to meet Francis Henning for a game of hazard?” she said in a rush.

  He gave an irritated sigh. “I suppose you’ll go, anyway. Shall I drive you?”

  She was surprised he’d given in. “No. I’ll take a hack.”

  “Be back before dark,” he ordered, continuing past the mansion and stopping the carriage by a stand of coaches for hire. “And don’t soak Francis, or I’ll end up footing his bills for the rest of the month.”

  She nodded and climbed down, suddenly reluctant to leave his company. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “You’d best be, waif. I don’t wish to have to go looking for you.” He clucked to the team. “And you’re still not going to the Fontaine rout.”

  She smiled, hoping it wasn’t simply his sense of duty speaking, and that he truly was concerned over her well-being. “We’ll see.”

  The tavern her father had selected for their rendezvous was just far enough beyond the fringes of Mayfair that he was unlikely to encounter anyone who might remember Stewart Brantley. They were used to being anonymous. The odd looks she received as she stepped into the Hanging Crow Tavern on Long Acre were therefore unsettling. Only after she spied her father seated close to a back wall did she relax a little. “Bon jour, Papa,” she murmured, sinking onto the bench opposite him.

  “You look like a damned blue blood, Kit.” Stewart Brantley scowled.

  “If I don’t fit in, no one will speak to me,” she countered stiffly. Her clothes were wonderful. And wearing them was the closest she’d felt to being the noble Everton had said she was, since leaving England thirteen years ago.

  “If you’re arrested for theft, you won’t fit in, either,” her father pointed out. He poured her an ale and slid it across the table. “You know better than to be careless.”

  “I didn’t steal them,” she retorted, smoothing the sleeve of her coat. “Everton bought them for me.”

  His fingers paused for a bare moment. “Why?”

  “Apparently he felt sorry for me,” she answered. She had intended to tell him that the earl knew her secret, but as she looked at her father’s already doubtful expression, she decided that enlightening him would only unnecessarily complicate matters. It was likely that he would drag her out of London and back to Paris, and then she wouldn’t be able to assist him. There was nothing further involved in her reasoning—and it certainly had nothing to do with Alex Cale. “Said he couldn’t take me about London in rags.”

  “I told you how persuasive you could be,” he commented, and leaned forward. “Have you learned anything?”

  She shook her head. “A few possibilities, but nothing for certain. Alex seems—”

  “Alex?” her father repeated, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yes, Alex,” she answered. “He’s put out that we’re cousins.” Again, she refrained from informing him that the lie had been her idea. It felt odd, not telling him everything, for she had always done so before. Perhaps it was the whole game of spying. She was becoming too used to twisting truths. Or perhaps, she admitted, she was becoming too intrigued with Alexander Cale. “And he’s taken the idea of protecting me to heart. We should’ve come up with another tale.”

  He nodded. “I hadn’t thought the scoundrel would care.”

  She sat back and lifted her ale. “I am wearing him down,” she commented. “He’s taking me to the Fontaine rout tonight.”

  Finally he smiled. “Splendid.”

  “And you promised me,” she continued slowly. “Once you’ve settled with Fouché, you won’t deal with him any longer.”

  “I go where the largest profit lies,” he snapped. “Fouché was a risk, I admit. But if we’re successful, we can go far beyond settling with him.”

  “If you’d tell me what you were planning, it might make my task a bit easier,” she grumbled. “Unless you don’t trust me.” Kit looked at him sideways, but Stewart Brantley’s expression didn’t change.

  “It’s not necessary that you know. And don’t question a bad cause at the expense of good money.”

  “I know, I know.” She glanced about to make certain no one was watching them, then touched the back of his hand with her fingers. “I’ll find him. Soon.”

  “I know you will.”

  “I don’t care if it’s going to be stupid and boring without your esteemed presence, Kit,” Alex commented, “and you can stomp your feet or throw a tantrum or whatever childish thing you wish to do. I’m not changing my mind. You’re not going.”

  Kit glared at him. She’d been after Everton for better than an hour now, since he’d returned from the afternoon session of Parliament, and she still hadn’t worn him down. “You can’t make me stay, and I’m not childish.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I can, and yes, you are.” Alex turned around, dismissing her, as Antoine availed him of his splendid gray evening coat.

  “This is beyond belief!” Kit stomped her foot and harrumphed. When that failed to gain his attention, she grabbed his fine kid gloves off the dressing table and threw them on the
floor. “Vous êtes un bravache gros!”

  Alex glanced at her reflection in the mirror. “Antoine?”

  “You are a big bully, my lord.”

  “Vous êtes un bravache arrogant!”

  “You are an—”

  “I understood that one.”

  Kit recognized the tone of his voice, and his irritated expression. She’d pushed him too far again. He turned on her, and with a curse she spun around to flee. She had barely made it into the hallway when his hand clamped down on one shoulder in a hard and unbreakable grip. Alex spun her around. “So I’m arrogant, am I?”

  “Un bravache arrogant,” she repeated clearly.

  He wrapped both hands around her upper arms and forced her backward. She tried to stand her ground, but despite her efforts, he continued to push her until her spine came up against the wall. She could have kicked or bitten him, should have done so, but in the face of those glinting eyes she could only lift her chin defiantly.

  “An arrogant…bully,” he translated. “Care to apologize?”

  In the dim lamplight, the eyes gazing down at her were almost black. His long-fingered hands were warm through the thin material of her shirt as he held her pinned, for she hadn’t yet donned her own coat. “Vous êtes un bravache, et vous avez les yeux beaux.” You are a bully, and you have beautiful eyes. If he’d had an inkling of French, she would have been doomed, but she couldn’t help saying it, anyway.

  His lips twitched. “Translate,” he demanded.

  “Jamais!” she responded gleefully, more relieved than she cared to admit. “Death first.”

  For a long moment he looked down at her, several emotions running across his lean features, then, with an exasperated snort, he released her. “You are an impossible annoyance. Go get your coat, chit. And you will behave tonight.”

  “Oh, thank you! Thank you, Alex!” She ran for her bedchamber. As she turned away, she failed to notice the slight smile that touched her host’s lips as he returned to his own bedchamber.

  “You stay close by,” Everton muttered to his companion out of the side of his mouth. He smiled and stepped forward to greet Lord and Lady Fontaine, their host and hostess for the evening.