“What about this man who brought the news? Mr. Gregory,” Mabel asked, sending her a quick side glance.
Heat rushed to Celeste’s cheeks. An odd sensation considering they were talking about someone she had so little connection to. But the circumstance was certainly fraught, so that must be why she felt so warm and odd when she thought of the man.
“No one can deny he is handsome,” she said.
Mabel giggled. “I peeped from the window when he arrived earlier, and indeed, he’s well favored. At least it won’t be an unpleasant ride to London, there will be something to look at.”
“Mabel!” Celeste gasped, but then laughed. She’d had Mabel as her maid for several years and they were often more like friends in private. She worried her lip a moment. “He is more than handsome, though. He could have been…horrible about all this. Many would have been. But he wasn’t.”
Mabel arched a brow. “Handsome and kind? Men like that don’t fly by all that often.”
“No.” Celeste sighed. “But I’m certain after we arrive in London, he’ll only call on me to answer questions if he needs information. We will hardly see him.”
“Hmmm.” They went back to packing as Mabel said, “And do you have a plan then, Miss Celeste?”
Celeste’s hands trembled and she set the gown she’d been ready to pack down on the bed. “I don’t know. But I will. I must.” She fisted her hands and collected her resolve. “And I can tell you that none of those plans will likely involve ever coming back here again.”
Chapter 4
The trip started out most inauspiciously, with a clap of thunder and then a downpour that had continued for the next two hours. Celeste and her maid Mabel were safe and warm enough inside the carriage Owen had hired to ferry them to London. But he was on his horse and it was a miserable ride, indeed.
He glanced up at the sky, silently cursing whatever ancient, vengeful god had brought this cold and unpleasant torrent down on his head. Then again, perhaps whichever one had done so was only trying to tell him that he shouldn’t involve himself too closely with Celeste Montgomery. Not bad advice, if cruelly given.
It was becoming painfully clear to him that he was already too close to her. After all, he had dreamed of her the night before. Not an innocent dream, either. No, he had unbound all those beautiful red locks, let them cascade over them like a fiery curtain while he stroked every inch of that luscious, curvy body with his tongue. She’d rocked and keened beneath him until all there was left was pleasure, pleasure, pleasure…
He’d woken hard enough that a cold bath had been in order before he traveled to her home, where he’d had to pretend to be proper so he wouldn’t make her uncomfortable knowing he felt things she certainly couldn’t want him to feel. The universe was now rewarding him with a second cold bath to keep his unexpected lust in check.
Why her? He’d never been the kind of man to pant over a woman in such a shameless way. He took a lover now and then. He wasn’t a monk. But he didn’t…pine. He didn’t seduce. He didn’t…he didn’t dream of specific women the way he’d dreamt of her.
Only the why her was actually obvious. And it wasn’t just that she was beautiful. She was beautiful, of course, that was just a fact. But all of the Mrs. Montgomerys were beautiful, and he didn’t have naughty dreams about the other two.
Celeste was different…interesting. She was sharp as a pin, observant in a way he had spent years training himself to become. She didn’t smile all that often, not that he expected her to do so under the circumstances, but when she did…well, she was even lovelier. He felt like he had to earn that expression, coaxed from that otherwise serious demeanor.
The window to the carriage opened in that moment, and the very lady he had been obsessively pondering appeared there. She had removed her hat and her red hair was in a sleek chignon, save for a few locks that curled around her chin. She smiled out at him. His heart, betrayer that it was, thudded hard in his chest.
“Mr. Gregory, won’t you please join me in the carriage?” she asked, glancing up at the cloudy sky. “It is positively horrible out and I’m sure you could use the respite from the torrent.”
He followed her look up at the dark skies and sighed. He was miserable. He signaled to the driver to stop, and he did so.
Celeste shot him another smile, this one brighter. “Good. I knew you were a man who could be reasoned with.”
With that, she shut the window, and he took the time to tend to his horse and peel out of his soaked greatcoat so he wouldn’t fill the warm interior of the carriage with steam and damp.
Finally he opened the door and stepped inside. He settled on the seat across from Celeste and her maid, who appeared to be asleep. As he did so, Celeste handed across a blanket.
“Much obliged,” he said, drying his hair a bit with it before he laid it across his damp legs to warm himself. As they began to move again, he motioned toward Mabel, whose head was lolled back against the carriage seat with her mouth open a fraction. Every once in a while she let out a little snorting snore. “Is that normal?”
Celeste laughed as she tossed a side glance to the sleeping woman. “Incredibly, yes. She is like a rock once she’s asleep. She’ll probably be like that for hours.”
He shifted slightly. If that were true then it was almost like they were alone. A dangerous proposition considering where his thoughts had been taking him not five minutes before. “So you called me in here for company.”
She inclined her head at his gentle teasing. “Perhaps. I did lose interest in my book and you were the next best thing.”
He snorted out a laugh at her directness. Yet another thing that appealed to him. She did not mince, this one. She was always direct, whether in jest or in seriousness. “Then I am at your disposal for entertainments of any kind.”
The moment he said the words, she bent her head further and a little color entered her cheeks. He wished he could pull that sentence back, with all its innuendo that was so highly inappropriate.
“That sounds both fascinating and ominous,” she said, her tone a bit breathier. “But I was thinking, as I was riding along with my maid snoring in my ear and my book boring me, that you know a great deal about me. At least about some of my circumstances. But I don’t know very much about you.”
“Ah, so you invited me into your carriage for an interrogation,” he teased, hoping to put her at ease again. He found he didn’t like the alternative. “Excellent choice. I cannot escape, you control the environment. You even softened me by offering me the kindness of the blanket.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Oh no, that was never my intent!”
He shook his head at her shock and horror at the idea she might have been so devious. “I’m teasing you. Of course you’re interested in some information about me. It’s only natural, for I have certainly made your life more…complicated.”
“Not on purpose, I don’t think. But yes,” she conceded.
He sighed. “Then what would you like to know?”
She worried her lip for a moment, a distracting action to say the least. Then she shrugged. “How did you become an investigator?”
Owen’s brows lifted. He hadn’t expected that question of all questions. But he had an answer. “I didn’t start that way. I was actually the man of affairs for Lord Livingston. I helped manage his estate and finances, took care of odd jobs he felt were beneath a viscount. I was good at it, but not particularly engaged by the vocation. He wasn’t particularly fond of a young lady his eldest son had taken an interest in, and one day he asked me to do a little looking into her background and her activities.”
Her mouth twisted a little with displeasure. “You were to spy on her.”
“I suppose that is one way to put it,” he conceded. “I thought of it more as doing due diligence. The lady would become viscountess one day and a marriage to the son came with a great deal of money and power. It wasn’t entirely cruel for Livingston to want to know more about her intentions. I
did the work, dug into her past and her present. I found I truly enjoyed it.”
“So you are nosy by nature?” she asked.
He smiled. “A little. But it was more that — I was assembling a puzzle. I’d get a piece of information—was it important? How would it fit into the overall picture? Sometimes I wouldn’t know until days later when I had five more pieces of information, and suddenly it became clear what the first piece meant.”
“You light up when you talk about it,” she said with the flutter of a smile. “It’s apparent you still have a great passion for the work.”
He shrugged. “I do. It is my calling, I suppose, if you want to put it in somewhat religious and extremely dramatic terms.”
“You are lucky to have one,” she said, and glanced out the window at the streaking rain. “Gentlemen have that option more often than ladies. I’m supposed to see marriage and motherhood as my calling. But it can’t be every lady’s calling, can it? That you as a man can contain such multitudes and I can only have one future laid out before me?”
He frowned at the sadness in her expression as she asked the question. “I don’t believe that. You clearly contain multitudes.”
She snorted out a little bitter laugh. “I will have to now. This scandal will destroy all possibility of the life that has always been expected of me. Perhaps I should say a thank you to my…husband or whatever we’d like to call him.”
“You’re looking for the positive.”
“What other choice do I have?” She sighed and then straightened up. “And now I have taken us off topic. You were telling me how spying on a potentially wayward lady turned into a career and I interrupted.”
He hesitated, for his desire to push further on her was pulsing. Yet her face was a mask that told him she wanted space. Needed it, perhaps. And he didn’t want to make this worse for her. She was vulnerable, and if his story evened the score a little then it was worth the telling.
“I suppose I couldn’t hide my excitement from the viscount as I worked on the investigation, because when it was over he offered to sponsor me in starting my own business where I would do so permanently. I accepted. He helped introduce me to potential clients and spread the word that I was trustworthy and discreet when needed. And then he set me free.”
“And here you are,” she said. “Whatever happened to the lady?”
He laughed. “She was doing nothing untoward. In fact, she was very much in love with the gentleman. They married and Lord Livingston adores her now. She teases me mercilessly about my grand investigation every time I come for supper.”
“So Livingston is a man willing to admit he was wrong, too.” Celeste shook her head. “As rare as a sprite. How wonderful to have such a benefactor.”
“Indeed. He was a friend when I needed him and he hired me as his man of affairs. And he was my friend when he gave me the tools to my own freedom.”
“You needed him?” she pressed.
He drew in a long breath. Here was where he would make himself vulnerable. He told himself it was only to balance the scales, but there was also a part of him that wanted her to know him a little more. To feel a little closer.
“My mother had died a few months before,” he said, feeling out the pain that still accompanied that statement, even all these many years later. “I fear I was a bit rudderless. He was kind to offer me the job when I had no experience. And trained me patiently, kept me on for five years while I settled into the man I would be.”
“I’m sorry about your mother,” she said. “Were you close?”
“Very,” he declared with a smile. She had been gone so long now and the grief never fully faded, but it had softened so that he could recall all the wonderful things about her, not just the heartbreak of her loss. “My father was a vagabond at heart. He’d just bought a commission into the army when my mother came up with child…with me. He was forced to marry her and then he went on with his life almost as if we didn’t exist. I wasn’t close to him—he died when I was sixteen. But she was…remarkable. She made the best of the worst situation.”
“Then I suppose that gives me hope that I can do the same,” Celeste said with another of those faint smiles. “I’m sorry I could not have met her.”
He met her gaze and held there, drawn in by gray-blue seas. “So am I.”
Those words seemed to draw all the air from the carriage and they stared at each other as time ticked by, perhaps a moment, perhaps a lifetime, it was hard to say. What wasn’t hard to say was that he wanted to kiss her. It was a desire that rolled through him like a tidal wave, almost overpowering even if he knew it was so very wrong.
But there it was.
And from the way she held herself, held his gaze, he had to wonder if she wished for the same. If she would shudder if he touched her. If she would sigh if he claimed her lips.
But before he could do something so foolish, her maid started awake beside her and the spell was broken. “Oh, Mr. Gregory,” Mabel said, rubbing her eyes as she stared at him. “I didn’t realize you had joined us. I must have dozed.”
Celeste met his eyes with a conspiratorial arch of a brow even as she said, “Yes, indeed. If dozed means fell into the sleep of the dead.”
Mabel huffed out a little breath, but Owen could see that the two women were friends. Sometimes women of a certain station didn’t lower themselves as such. His mother had been a seamstress when the money his father sporadically sent had been sorely lacking, and there were only handful of women she serviced who treated her as anything better than furniture in the room. Lady Livingston being among those who saw her as a human, not a means to an end. It looked as though Celeste was like that lady, one he respected a great deal.
“Well, you two must catch me up on everything I missed so that I might join in the fun,” Mabel said.
Celeste cast him another glance, this one a little more furtive. As if she didn’t want to share what they’d been discussing, even with a friend.
“We were talking about museums in London,” Celeste said.
Mabel arched a brow as if she didn’t fully believe that. “Were you now? Well, then let us continue the topic so that I might know what to look forward to when Miss Celeste and I make our rounds.”
Owen stifled a chuckle. At least she had chosen a topic where he was well versed and might actually help her enjoy her time in the city. So as they began to discuss the much more benign topic, the tension between them faded a fraction, replaced by ease and laughter.
And for that he was both pleased…and disappointed. But he would have to put the latter reaction away because he could not involve himself with Celeste Montgomery. There was absolutely no way.
Chapter 5
The inn Owen had chosen for the night was exceptional, and as Celeste had come down for supper, she marveled as she took in the beautiful dining hall where travelers were gathered around tables, eating what smelled and looked like luscious food and talking softly among themselves.
She scanned the room and found Owen at a table set for three. He waved when she met his eye, and she crossed to him with a blush. “Good evening,” he said. “I hope you found your accommodations to your liking.”
She nodded. “Our room is lovely. Very comfortable.” She shifted as he helped her to her seat and then retook his own. “I hope the duke and the earl will not be irritated that you chose such a fine inn. I wish I could say I could repay the expense but—”
He shook his head to interrupt her. “Celeste, on this count you must not worry yourself. You are coming to London to assist them in my investigation. This is a small expense and one I would have had to incur whether you came with me or not, as I would have had to stop on my way to London anyway.”
She ignored the fact that he would not have let a carriage, nor had to pay for the extra rooms for their driver or for her and Mabel. He was trying to reassure her and she attempted to be reassured as a response.
“Where is Mabel, then?” Owen asked when she didn’t press t
he issue. “Coming in a moment?”
“She decided to take a smaller meal in our chamber,” Celeste explained. “She wanted to do some mending of one of my gowns and said she had a book to read. It will only be the two of us tonight.”
Something in Owen’s stare shifted at those words. The same thing that had come into his gaze when they were talking in the carriage earlier, when the air had gotten heavy and a tingle had rushed through her like something was going to happen. He blinked it away swiftly, though, and smiled, popping that dimple in his cheek that was so very endearing.
“Then two it will be.” He motioned for the serving maid to come over and she told them what the kitchen had as options for supper. Once they had chosen and were alone again, he leaned back in his chair, casual and comfortable. Strange how that made her even edgier when he was lounged in his chair like a king. “The circumstances are not the best, but are you pleased to be out of Twiddleport? When was the last time you traveled?”
She worried her lip. He had likely gone all around the country, perhaps even traveled in the wider world. She felt very much like a chawbacon when she stammered, “I-I have never traveled.”
He stared at her a moment. “Never? You never went to London, even with your parents?”
She worried her lip. “I didn’t. My mother had designs for me to wed one of the local gentry, so she focused all her attentions on him when I first came out rather than take me to London to exhibit.”
“What happened to him?”
“He had designs on someone with a higher rank than himself, as is the way. My mother never had a chance. By that time, I had developed a reputation for being a bluestocking who would argue finer points of fact, and that scared off the rest.”
“Was that by design?” he asked, and smiled up at the young woman as she brought their soup.
Once she had gone, Celeste drew in a deep breath of the delicious broth and took a spoonful. She couldn’t help the rumble of pleasure that came deep from her chest. Owen quickly dropped his gaze to his own bowl and began to eat.
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