Devil take them, would they never stop?
Finally, after about two more minutes that felt like two decades, the tumult subsided.
Leave, Lydia silently commanded. You’ve had your fun. Now go away.
But no, now they had to exchange pillow talk.
“Lovely performance, Annette,” said the man. “But you may tell your mistress that one accommodating slut is not enough to appease me.”
The mattress shifted and a pair of stockinged masculine feet descended to the floor, inches from Lydia’s head. She felt Ainswood’s hand slide over her back and press her down firmly.
She comprehended his silent message: Keep still.
She remained still, although it seemed that every muscle in her body was twitching. From her vantage point, it was evident that the fellow was conducting a search similar to theirs. She stifled a gasp when he unearthed the hatbox she’d emptied.
But he flung it aside and snatched up a bonnet. “Here’s my silver stickpin,” he said. “Now, do you know what this looks like? It looks like adding insult to injury. After keeping what she knew was mine, and lying when I asked her whether I’d left it here, she has the effrontery to flaunt the thing in public—adorning her garish bonnet, no less.”
“I did not know,” came the girl’s uneasy voice. “I never saw it before, I promise you, monsieur.”
The stockinged feet advanced to the bed, then disappeared as he climbed onto it, the mattress sinking under his weight. The girl let out a shriek.
“Do you like that, Annette?” the man asked, his voice tinged with amusement. “Would you like to be my pincushion for an hour or so? I can think of many interesting places to—”
“Please, monsieur. It was not me. I did not take it. Why do you punish me?”
“Because I am very cross, Annette. Your mistress stole my wicked little stickpin—one of a kind, and it cost me plenty. And she’s stolen—or driven off—the little flower girl I’d set my heart on. A pretty little cripple, all alone in the world. She wasn’t in her usual place in Covent Garden last night, but Corrie was there, all smiles. The girl wasn’t there tonight, either.” The mattress moved violently and the girl cried out.
Lydia felt Ainswood’s body tense beside her. She, too, was tensing, eager to spring out and beat senseless the foul thing above them. But the girl began to giggle, and Lydia reminded herself what sort of girl Annette was: second only to Madam Brees in ruthlessness and brutality, Annette was the one who usually helped Josiah and Bill break in new girls.
Lydia found Ainswood’s hand and pressed hers upon it, willing him to remain where he was.
“No, this isn’t the way to punish her, is it?” the man was saying. “What does she care what I do to you?”
Once more his feet descended to the floor. This time, he collected the garments he’d discarded so hastily.
“Get dressed,” he said. “Or stay undressed, whatever you prefer. But you’re going on a treasure hunt, Annette, and I hope for your sake it’s successful.”
“But I do not know what has become of the jewelry.”
Lydia’s heart tried to crawl into her throat.
The girl knew the jewelry was missing. Evidently her client had either returned or arrived unexpectedly, and interrupted her ransacking of Coralie’s bedroom. It must have been Annette and this vile man they had heard arguing downstairs.
The man laughed. “What good is that rat’s nest to me? It would take weeks to untangle it, and for what? A very few items of any value, mixed with a prodigious lot of worthless gewgaws. Corrie has no taste, no discernment, only greed. No, my little pincushion. I want the silver, gold, and banknotes. The box. I know what it looks like, but I’m not in a humor to hunt for it.”
“Monsieur, I beg you. I am the only one she tells where it is. If it is gone, she will blame me, and she—”
“Tell her I made you do it. I want you to tell her. I want her to know. Where is it?”
After a brief pause, Annette answered sullenly, “In the cellar.”
Her swain moved to the door. “I’ll wait at the back while you fetch it. Make it quick.”
The mattress bounced as the girl alit from the bed. Muttering in French too low for Lydia to understand, Annette picked up her garments and hurried out after him.
The door had scarcely closed behind Annette, and Lydia had hardly begun breathing normally again, when Ainswood gave her a push. “Out,” he whispered.
Lydia obediently wriggled out from under the bed, the hand on her hindquarters hastening her exit. He didn’t wait for her to scramble up from the floor, but dragged her up and pushed her toward the light closet door.
They were obliged to wait at the window while a servant exited the privy. A moment after the menial had departed, Lydia was climbing down from the building’s roof. Ainswood reached the ground at the same time and grabbed her shoulder. “Stay here,” he murmured in her ear. “I’ve something to do. It won’t take long.”
Lydia tried to do as she was told, but after several tense minutes, curiosity got the better of her. She edged cautiously along the wall of the outdoor necessary and peeped ’round the corner.
She saw Ainswood’s big form leaning against the house wall near a stairway leading belowground. As she watched, a man ascended, bearing a small box. He paused when he caught sight of the masked idler, then started to descend again, but Ainswood moved very quickly.
While Lydia watched, dumbstruck, the duke dragged the man up the stairs and flung him against the wall. The box clattered to the ground at the same instant Ainswood’s fist crashed into his prey’s gut. The man doubled over. The big fist smashed again—into his face, this time—and he toppled to the ground.
“You shit-eating maggot,” Ainswood said in low, hard tones Lydia scarcely recognized as his. Turning from his unconscious victim, the duke untied his mask. He cast it aside as he strode toward her.
Numbly, she pulled off her own mask.
He took her arm and steered her out of the narrow yard and into Francis Street.
Not until they reached the Tottenham Court Road did Lydia find her voice. “What in blazes was that for?” she asked breathlessly.
“You heard him,” he said in the same dangerously low tones. “The flower girl. He was the one who tried to lure her—and now you can deduce what he would have done to her.”
Lydia came to a stop and looked down at his hands, then up into his hard, angry face.
“Oh, Ainswood,” she cried softly. She reached up and grasped his shoulders. She meant to shake him, because he was such a fraud—pretending, last night, that he’d thrown money at the girl merely to get her out of the way.
Lydia did start to shake him. But then her arms circled those massive shoulders, and she hugged him instead. “Thank you. It’s what I wanted to do—smash him.” And I could kiss you for it, she thought as she tilted her head back to look again into his grimly set countenance.
But thinking it wasn’t enough.
She kissed him.
Still, she wasn’t altogether lost to reason. She meant the kiss to be quick, a brief salute to his chivalry. Her lips would touch his cheek lightly, a friendly gesture for a job well done.
But he turned his head and caught the kiss on his mouth, and when his arms lashed about her, she understood what a fraud she was, pretending she’d wanted anything less.
The mouth crushing hers wasn’t gentle and persuasive as it had been last night, but angry and insistent.
She should have broken away, but she didn’t know how to resist what she wanted so badly, bad as it was to give in. She curled her arms ’round his neck and drank in greedily the wild heat and anger. Like some dangerous liquor, it raced through her veins, stirring the devil inside to mad joy.
She should not feel so happy, as though it were she who’d conquered instead of being conquered. But she was glad, feverishly so, because the iron bands of his arms crushed her, molding her to him as though he would crush her into his skin. This was whe
re she wanted to be: part of him, as though he had a piece missing and she was the only one that fit.
His mouth pressed for more, and she parted to him, and shivered with guilty pleasure when his tongue tangled with hers in sinful intimacy. His big hands moved over her, boldly, as though she belonged to him, as though there was no question about it. And in that moment, it seemed inarguable to her.
She let her own hands move down to slip under the edge of his waistcoat, over his shirt, and she shivered again as the powerful muscles tautened under her touch. Then she understood she had power over him as well. She searched until she found the place where he couldn’t hide the truth from her, where she could feel the furious beat of his heart against her palm.
She felt him shudder under her touch, as she did under his, heard the low, hungry sound he made as he boldly grasped her bottom and pressed her pelvis to the hard swell of his.
She hadn’t layers of petticoats to insulate her this time, and the size and pulsing heat of him made her recoil reflexively. It was no more than an instant’s startled reaction, but he must have felt it, because he broke away.
He pulled his head back, grasped her upper arms, and said thickly, “Dammit, Grenville, this is a public byway.”
He released her, stepped aside, and picked up the bundle she hadn’t realized she’d dropped. Then he took firm hold of her arm with his free hand and marched her down the street to the waiting carriage.
Annette had not quite closed the cellar door when she heard the hurried footsteps—returning, not departing. She hadn’t looked, only listened. She’d heard the thud against the wall and a clatter and grunts.
Annette had walked the streets of some of Paris’s most unsavory neighborhoods. She could not fail to recognize the sounds of a back-alley attack. She’d lured any number of drunks into ambush in her misspent youth.
She heard an angry English voice and knew it wasn’t her repellent client’s. She waited, listening, until retreating footsteps told her the angry voice’s owner had exited the narrow yard.
Then she slipped out and cautiously ascended the stairs. The space was little more than an alley, unlit except for what feeble light filtered down from a few overlooking windows. Nonetheless, she had sufficient light to discern whose body lay upon the ground.
She drew nearer. To her disappointment, the pig was still breathing. She looked about for something to finish him off with, but no satisfactory weapon lay within reach, not even a stray brick. This neighborhood was all too tidy and respectable, she thought, frustrated. Then her eye lit upon the box. She started toward it. The man groaned and moved. Annette kicked him in the head, snatched up the box, and ran.
At about this time, Vere was watching Grenville climb into his carriage and wishing someone would kick him in the head.
He scowled up at Jaynes, who sat in the driver’s seat, wearing a villainously knowing smile.
The blackguard had seen.
So might anyone passing along the Tottenham Court Road have done. Unlike Jaynes, however, they wouldn’t know it was a female Vere had wrapped himself about like a boa constrictor, trying to crush and devour her simultaneously.
He tossed the bundle to her, then flung himself inside and onto the seat.
The carriage jolted into motion with an abruptness that threw Grenville against him. She hastily righted herself, and that, for some reason, incensed him.
“You’ve left it rather late to play propriety,” he snapped. “The gossips could banquet on the morsel for the next twelvemonth. If anyone saw us, it’ll be all over London by noon tomorrow that the Duke of Ainswood fancies boys.”
“You’ve left it rather late to worry about scandal,” she said coolly. “You’ve been giving the gossips an endless series of banquets for years. Suddenly, tonight, you decide to become sensitive to public opinion.” She shot him a blasting look of blue sleet.
He didn’t need better light to know it was blue or a thermometer to ascertain the temperature. “Don’t give me any of your deadly looks,” he fumed. “You’re the one who started it.”
“I didn’t hear you screaming for help,” she said contemptuously. “I didn’t notice you putting up any sort of struggle. Or am I supposed to believe that the two blows with which you dispatched that pervert left you too weak to fend off my assault?”
He hadn’t even thought of resisting. If she hadn’t started it, he would have, which was stupid, when he’d only get himself worked up for nothing. Even if he was humiliatingly randy for this infuriatingly arrogant female, he could hardly slake his lust in a public thoroughfare. And it would not be satisfactory anywhere else, because she was a novice.
But he wasn’t randy for her in particular, he told himself. It was the circumstances. Danger could be sexually arousing.
Yet he hadn’t been excited in the usual way during those moments under the bed. He’d been sick with dread while he listened to the nauseating maggot, and imagined everything horrible that could possibly happen: a knife in Vere’s back, a cudgel to his head, and Death coming for him finally, at the one moment Vere couldn’t afford to go, because then there would be no one to protect her from the slug and his perverted bedmate, and they would do terrible, sickening things to his partner in crime. And Vere had prayed, fervently, desperately: Only let me live through this, long enough to get her safe away—only that, and I’ll be good, I promise.
An image flickered in his mind of himself, holding a child’s hand and silently pleading, trying to bargain with an unseen Power. He hastily blocked out the image, and ignored the painful tightness in his chest.
“I don’t want you,” he said.
“Liar,” she said.
“You’re so conceited,” he said, turning away. “You, Miss Vestal Virgin Grenville, think you know everything. You didn’t even know how to kiss until I taught you.”
“I don’t recollect begging for the lesson,” she said.
“And so you conclude you’re irresistible.”
“To you, yes. I should like to know what else I should logically conclude from your behavior. And I should like to know why you have to make such a fuss about it.”
“I am not making a fuss—and I wish you would stop using that patronizing term.”
“I wish you’d stop lying,” she said. “You do it very ill. I don’t see why you can’t admit you find me attractive, and it mortifies you—because I annoy you, and because I’m an ignorant virgin, and whatever other ‘becauses’ are troubling your manly dignity. Doubtless it hasn’t occurred to you that I’m mortified, too. Finding you attractive is no compliment to my taste and judgment. Fate has played me any number of provoking tricks, but this beats them all.”
He turned back to look at her.
She sat rigidly erect, staring straight ahead, her hands tightly folded upon the bundle in her lap.
“Confound you, Grenville,” he said, his own hands fisting on his lap. “There’s no need to get all pinched up like that, as though I hurt your feelings.”
“As though you could,” she said scornfully. “As though I’d let you.”
“Then what?” he demanded. “What do you want me to do? Bed you? You’ve lived to this great age—”
“Eight and twenty,” she said, her jaw stiff. “I am not a crone.”
“You’ve managed to guard your virtue for all this time,” he went on, his voice rising. “You are not going to make me responsible. You are not going to make me believe I’ve corrupted your morals.”
“I don’t give a damn what you believe.”
“You knew what I was when you met me! Even your harlot friend warned you against me! She told you to get out of London, didn’t she?”
“London is a large place. There was no reason for our paths to cross, again and again.” She shot him a sidelong glance. “No reason for you to turn up at the Blue Owl, which all the world knows is a publishing trade haunt. No reason for you to turn up at Jerrimer’s, or to pursue me to Helena’s, or to turn up at Covent Garden last night,
on the only night I’ve gone there alone. Am I to believe that was all mere happenstance, that you haven’t someone spying on me? Tell me you haven’t, that this is more of my conceit, imagining you’ve gone to so much trouble on my account.”
The corner of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. “Then tell me another, why don’t you, Ainswood, because that cock won’t fight.”
“Plague take you, Grenville, I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known you were a curst damned virgin!”
She did not answer right away, and the damning words he’d uttered seemed to hang in the tension-fraught air between them.
Then he was mortified, truly, as the meaning sank in and he saw what he’d done. He was a liar, just as she said, and he’d been lying to himself for weeks. Pitiful, childish lies. She was a beautiful monster and he wanted her, he was afraid to think how much. Rarely had he ever wanted anything badly, and never a woman. He had only one use for women, and no one woman had ever been worth taking any trouble for, not when there were so many, and the next would do as well.
He had a horrible suspicion that this time, no one else would do. If that wasn’t the case, why hadn’t he found someone else? It wasn’t as though London had suddenly run out of whores, was it?
It was a short drive to Soho Square, not nearly long enough for him to decide what to do. A glance out the window told him they’d already reached Charles Street.
“It seems you’re in the grip of one of your sporadic fits of nobility,” the beautiful monster said.
“I’m not noble,” he said tightly. “Don’t make me out to be what I’m not. I made a mistake, that’s all, and it’s no surprise, since I make this sort often enough. I mistook Dain’s lady for a ladybird, didn’t I? If you’d had someone at hand as she did, to pound the facts into me in the first place, none of this would have happened. I was ready to go, as soon as I understood my error, last night. You were the one who called me back and asked for help. If you’d kept your distance a little while ago, I would have kept my hands to myself. But you can’t expect—”
He broke off as his gaze drifted downward, over the long stretch of wickedly curving trousered leg. Then upward it strayed again over the perfect contours of hip and waist, the waist his big hands could easily span, and on to the glorious swell of her bosom while longing tore at him, shredding pride and a lifetime’s accumulation of cynicism.