A Bride by Moonlight (28 page)

And now Napier was left to pray that Lazonby was a better man than he’d believed. He had to take comfort in Anisha’s judgment in marrying the fellow, and perhaps in her capacity for mercy. Were Lazonby fool enough to go back on his statement—not something a man would do lightly—then surely Anisha would stop him?

He drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly, resisting the urge to tell Lisette that whatever she was, whatever she had done, it simply did not matter. Yet he remained frozen in place. Not because it wasn’t true, but because Lisette would never have believed him.

There was nothing but the sound of water sloshing around the pillars below now. Gwyneth and Tony had long ago gone inside. Even the owl had stilled. At last Lisette turned around. Behind her, the lake glittered like a backdrop of diamonds, but her face lay in shadows.

“You brought me here, Napier, because you thought I was a good actress,” she said, her voice surprisingly resolute. “And because I can be determined and yes, perhaps even a little ruthless. So let me do what I came here to do. Let me, for once, do the right thing.”

“And just what would that be, Lisette?” he asked quietly.

“Well, I know what it is
not
,” she said, her voice grim. “It is not right for either of us to continue to blame Lazonby for our troubles. You called him devilish and duplicitous. I . . . I once thought the same. But whatever he is, I had no right to ruin his life. I had
no right.
And I am so deeply ashamed. I will live with that all of my days.”

It was as close to an admission as Napier was apt to get. “Lisette,” he said, stepping toward her.

She threw up a hand, palm out, to stop him. “I cannot undo the pain I’ve caused Lazonby or anyone else,” she said. “For my sort of sins, perhaps there is no redemption. But perhaps I can right someone else’s wrong. I can get inside Saint-Bryce’s office. If I’m caught, I’ll bat my eyes and play dumb. I’ll tell them I meant to visit Bea and got turned round. That the door was unlocked. Let them sort it out.”

Lisette drew in a ragged breath, and waited for Napier to speak. She did not think she was on thin ice here; no, not yet. But she was sick in the pit of her stomach, and very uncertain. Moreover, a part of her was tired of worrying. Perhaps she should confess everything to Napier, pen a note of abject apology to Lazonby, and let them throw her in prison for killing Sir Wilfred. Doubtless it was what many people would think she deserved.

Napier stood now by the bench, his long, harsh jaw set like stone, his dark hair tossing lightly in the breeze coming off the water. When he turned to face her, Lisette knew that he was wrestling with some sort of demon. A choice he did not wish to make.

She only prayed it had nothing to do with her crimes.

That telling hand went to his waist again, and he began to pace. Slowly. Like the predator he was, perhaps. Yet despite the danger and the thwarted emotion he radiated, Napier looked every inch the wealthy aristocrat in his dark frock coat and elegant breeches.

Duncaster insisted upon old-fashioned formality at dinner, attire that became Napier’s finely muscled legs. Even now she could see in her mind’s eye the hard bulges of his bare calf and thigh; could almost feel the weight of his leg thrown over hers, and the soft brush of hair that dusted—

Dear heaven!

How could she think of such a thing just now? She must have made a sound—a laugh, no doubt, at her own stupidity, for Napier was staring at her. Then the scant clouds shifted, casting him in shadows.

“Lisette—” he said, his voice raw.

She threw out a staying hand, and shook her head. “I know you are apt to be my undoing, Napier,” she said, the words a little unsteady. “I’ve known it since the moment you came walking up Sir Wilfred’s lawn. I could see it in that awful, purposeful stride of yours. I feared I’d eventually be done for, and that even Lazonby—with all his tricks and machinations—would not be able to save me from myself.”

“Lisette,” he said. “Lisette, I am
not
your enemy.”

She kept the hand up, for what little it was worth. “I don’t know anymore,” she said. “I didn’t count on you . . . on this . . . this
thing
I feel. I can’t bear it. Please don’t let me make a fool of myself, Napier. Not over you.”

He crossed the boathouse toward her, his tread heavy and ominous. “How am I to know what
this
is?” he whispered. “How am I to know how you feel? Or know anything about you?”

“I
feel
like a fool,” she said harshly. “That’s how I feel. As to the rest, you know what you need to know. May we let it go, Napier?
Please
. I’m doing what I promised. I’m keeping my end of the bargain, and you know it.”

Anger sketched across his face. “So you just want me to let everything go,” he said. “You don’t want to trust me with the truth. You don’t want anything more than this hellish bargain between us. You don’t want us to . . . to be honest. To be intimate in any meaningful way.”

Lisette closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. “Oh, Royden, you know I desire you.” His name slipped so easily from her lips. “One more of those knee-melting kisses, and probably I’d lie with you right here and now.”

“But it would be just sex,” he gritted, stepping toward her. “And you would have no finer feelings for me.”

For a long moment, she hesitated. “No,” she whispered. “It’s lust, Napier. And if we’re wise, that’s what we’ll both call it.”

He walked away then, all the way to the edge of the dock. There he hesitated, silhouetted in the moonlight, his hands clasped behind his back so tightly it looked painful.

“Then you leave me in an untenable position,” he finally said, his tone harsh. “If I argue, you’ll call me a cad. If I tell you I don’t care what you are, you’ll call me a liar. You’ll sleep with me if I press the matter. So long as we don’t talk. About anything personal. Does that about sum it up?”

“I—yes, I daresay it does.” She hung her head.

“Then we do indeed find ourselves at an impasse,” he said. “Shall I leave you now, Lisette? Is that what you wish?”

She threw up her hand impotently. Oh, she knew what she wished—and what she deserved. She felt the hot press of tears behind her eyes.

Napier radiated anger now. “Just tell me, Lisette, to go,” he said, “and I will. Tell me never to kiss you again. Never to touch you. To surrender all hope of having anything more of you. And trust me when I say that, in this moment, all those words would feel like a mercy.”

She swallowed hard, and finally found her voice. “You don’t want me, Napier,” she said, lifting her hand again. “Don’t imagine yourself in love with me, for God knows I don’t want to fall in love with you.”

Napier felt something deep in his chest twist like a knife. Before he knew what he was about, he’d closed the distance between them and dragged Lisette hard against him. “Fine, then, lie with me here and now,” he rasped. “As you say, it’s just lust. It won’t matter.”

“Napier, I never meant—”

But his mouth seized hers, shutting off the words with a kiss more domineering than tender. It was pure male possession. Something frighteningly akin to rage roiled inside him as Napier thrust deep into that warm sweetness that was almost painfully familiar to him now.

She trembled, but didn’t pull away. Entwining his tongue with hers, Napier pressed his hips into Lisette’s with unmistakable intent. In response, she made a soft, feminine sound of uncertainty. Hot need—that raw male wish to have her—shot through his body like a lightning bolt.

But the heels of her hands were still wedged hard against his shoulders. Lisette shoved, but the desire and the rage and that aching sense of loss had churned up anew and Napier could not relent. He burned for her. And she burned for him. Let her walk away if she could summon the will; he would damned well not make it easy. He needed to have his way in this one, simple thing, needed to force her actions to belie her cold words—or force her to backhand him royally.

It seemed he hardly cared which, for when her hands relaxed, Napier deepened the kiss, urging her back against the wooden column of the boathouse, plunging his fingers into her mass of curls to still her face to his kisses. He could hear his own pulse pounding in his ears. Could feel his cock surge hard as a tipstaff against the soft swell of her belly.

He wanted to kiss her until her breath came in gasps and her eyes were hooded and heavy with need. Wanted to thrust and caress and suckle until her cold, pale beauty was in utter dishabille. Wanted to force Lisette to . . .

To what?

To love him?

It was logic bordering on insanity.

And if he wanted a fight, he was not to have that, either.

Instead, Lisette had begun to kiss him back. Deeply. Hungrily.

He set a hand to her cheek, and on a soft groan, her hands slid around his waist, then under his coat, leaving him shivering with lust. He wished suddenly for the moonlight’s return—ached to see her eyes and the finely carved bones of her face. To see her desire for him—or at least the desire for what he could give her—writ plain upon her face.

On a rough exhalation, Napier shifted his hands to cup the full swells of her breasts. Lisette sighed into his mouth. He snared his thumbs in her décolletage, and tugged both dress and chemise down until the pale mounds surged over her corset and into his hands.

At last he lifted his mouth from hers, and let it slide lingeringly down her throat to catch a sweet, hard nub between his teeth. Gently he bit, teasing at the very tip with his tongue.

“
Oh. Napier.
”

The words were mere exhalations. Utter surrender. Lisette let her head fall back against the column, thrusting her bare breasts higher. Offering herself up for his pleasure. He accepted, suckling her hard—nipping first tenderly, and then not.

She cried out, trembling against him. When he turned his attention to the other breast, her hands slid lower, all the way down to the hard muscles of his hips to pull him toward her in that most carnal of ways. Napier continued his torment, drawing the swollen bud more fully into the heat of his mouth, sucking until her breath began to come in soft, quick gasps. In the heat of their passion her seductive scent rose, maddening him.

At last her fingers plunged into his hair on a cry.

Napier was vaguely aware of the risks he ran. The risk of the moon’s return. The risk of discovery.

The risk of losing his heart forever.

He forced it all from his mind and instead fisted up her skirts in a rustle of silk, winding them higher and higher in his hand. Slipping the other hand between them, he urged her legs apart with his knee and found his fingers wet with her silk. She gave a little cry of pleasure at the touch, and Napier pressed his mouth to her ear as he slipped one finger inside her slick sheath.

“Is this . . .
just lust
?” he whispered.

She swallowed hard, her head still tipped back against the column, her knees sagging weakly. “Damn you, Napier,” she finally said. “I always knew you were the devil.”

On a soft sound, he drew his fingers through her wetness again, this time grazing her sweet, quivering nub. She did not struggle when he shoved her skirts to her waist, nor when he pulled loose the tie of drawers.

He watched in satisfaction as the silk sailed down her legs to puddle on the planks. Lisette had slender, beautiful legs that begged to be hitched about his hips, giving him free range to thrust and plunder. But first, he was determined to enslave her as he was enslaved, if only fleetingly.

She stiffened with shock when he went down on one knee, and cried out threadily when he plunged his tongue into her heat.

“
Napier . . . ?
”

It was madness, perhaps. Especially for a man as calculated as himself. But he made love to her with his mouth all the same, easing two fingers into the wet tangle of curls, then into her silken passage. For long moments he thrust his fingers gently, tormenting her with his tongue, listening in satisfaction to her breathy sobs.

She clutched the railing behind with one hand, the nails of the other digging into his shoulders. “Oh, God,” she cried.

As her climax drew near, Lisette began to shake as if frightened, her hands moving as if to stop him. But he did not stop, and her fingers plunged into his hair again. Then she gave a soft, keening wail, shuddered, and then came apart beneath the gentle onslaught, her long, lithe body wracked with waves of release.

She was so beautiful, caught in the throes of her passion, and that beauty only ratcheted his own need higher. He stood and held her as she rocked with the last waves of release, then swiftly opened his trousers, yanking hard at the buttons. Shoving the fabric down in a wad, he lifted her and pushed himself inside her awkwardly. He lifted her another fraction, and felt the hot length of his cock slide deep into her pulling wetness.

Instinctively Lisette lifted one leg, hitching it over his hip. On a groan, Napier pinned her to the column with the strength of his body, lifted her in his arms, then took his own pleasure in thrusts so deep and so fast they would have shamed the greenest of schoolboys. There was no grace in his actions; it was a vulgar, desperate act, and Lisette was no woman of experience.

Yet the shame did not slow him. His breath heaving from his chest, Napier thrust and thrust again, lifting her with each stroke until his pleasure came, blinding white and pure in his head. And as the last surge of his seed pumped into her, and the deep, shuddering weakness took him, Napier knew without question he was lost.

CHAPTER 11

Fanny to the Rescue

L
isette and Napier returned to the house together, picking their way back up the path with rather more care than had been required to come down. The clouds had thickened now, and the moon showed little inclination to reappear. It was as well, Lisette decided, for the darkness helped to dispel the lingering awkwardness that now hung unspoken between them.

But perhaps words had become superfluous? As with all things, it seemed that Napier could look straight through to the truth inside her. He sensed her most intimate desires, could edge near her most closely held secrets, and knew, perhaps, her darkest fears.

Not for the first time, Lisette wished desperately she were more like her sister or her father. Easily self-deluded. Able to cling to hope when hope was but a pipe dream, ever certain that a life of happiness was not just around the corner, but that it was deserved.

Instead Lisette felt the curse of Cassandra upon her shoulders. This would not end well for her; she was in deep, her heart already half broken, and she knew it.

Nor, in the end, was she to have a reprieve from the awkwardness. Napier jerked to a halt halfway up the hill, and turned to face her in the gloom.

“Lisette, I’m sorry,” he said. “What we did just now . . . nightingales in Covent Garden, I daresay, are treated with more grace.”

She stood rigidly on the path. “Did I ask you for grace?” she said quietly. “You are an exquisite lover, Napier—a fact you doubtless use to your advantage. But if I told you I didn’t enjoy what we did just now, then we’d both know me for a liar.”

“A lady deserves something a little more elegant than to have her skirts thrown up,” he said, his voice rueful in the dark. “A lady deserves . . . romance, Lisette. To be properly courted. Flirted with.”

“But you are not a romantic, remember?” She forced a smile, though he could not see it. “And in truth, Napier, I cannot imagine a man less flirtatious.”

“Christ, Lisette. That’s harsh.”

“I don’t mean it so,” she replied. “It is who you are, and you’ve always been honest about it. And for a man who’s not a romantic, not flirtatious, and who possesses little in the way of charm, I’d say you’re doing pretty well for yourself. I haven’t yet found the will to refuse you. And I . . . well, I fear I never will.”

She could feel him watching her in the dark.

“Let it go, Napier,” she whispered. “Yes, we desire one another. And that might be unwise, but it’s neither vulgar, nor a crime. Let’s get back to worrying about what brought us here, and how we may resolve it.”

For a moment, she thought he didn’t mean to answer. Then, after a long pause, Napier set off up the path again. “You’re right,” he said. “The sooner we’re finished here the better.”

“Thank you.” She ignored the slight sting in his words. “Just tell me what to do.”

“Very well.” He spoke in hard, clipped tones: the impersonal giving of orders that she remembered from Hackney. “Tomorrow morning after breakfast, go into the library. Alone, if at all possible.”

“Certainly,” she replied. “And once there—?”

“Act as if you are looking for a book,” he said coolly, “and keep one eye on the door. Eventually, Jolley will walk past. Follow him at a distance into the great hall. He will go up the main staircase to the south side of the second floor.”

“South?” she said. “Toward the schoolroom and study?”

“Yes,” said Napier tightly. “Jolley carries in his pocket a lock pick—”

“Ah,” she murmured. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Just follow him,” Napier ordered. “If no one is about, he’ll have Saint-Bryce’s study open in a trice. I’d have him search it—he’s capable enough—but there’s no excuse for his being there should someone see him. And if you are seen—”

“If I’m seen, I’ll deal with it,” she interjected.

His lips thinned. “Very well,” he finally said. “Make a mental list of what’s in the room using your—what did you call it? Near total recall? God knows neither Jolley nor I have it. So survey the room and go through the desk. Take samples of any letter paper you find.”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Where will you be?”

“Unless it rains, I’m headed to Berkshire with Craddock to inspect one of Duncaster’s lesser estates,” he said. “We might be away the night. But Jolley can fetch me if need be.”

“There will be no need,” she promised. “You may count on me.”

“Thank you,” he said a little stiffly. “But after this, Lisette, I think we must make some hard decisions.”

“What do you mean?” The words came out more sharply than she’d intended.

He hesitated. “I should rather cross that bridge another day,” he finally said. “But I see little more to be done here.”

He then offered her his arm—a sort of truce, perhaps—and they continued in silence for a time, soon reaching the edge of Burlingame’s formal gardens. Lisette curled her hand into the softness of his coat sleeve, all too aware of the strength that lay beneath.

“Have you been in the schoolroom yet?” he eventually asked.

“Yes, but I’ve been unable to have a good look at it.” Idle gossip seemed safer than dwelling on what had just happened in the boathouse. “Someone is always there. Do you suspect Mrs. Jansen of something? She seems the most benign of creatures.”

Napier shook his head, but she felt some of the tension leave his arm. “I don’t know whom I suspect—nor even what I suspect them of,” he said. “Two deaths and two more perilously near it—and all in a few months’ time? Perhaps Underwood is sure Saint-Bryce died of apoplexy, but . . .”

There was something he wasn’t telling her, thought Lisette. Something besides a rambling letter from an old man on his deathbed, and a pair of sick footmen. But at least they were back on their old footing.

“And poor Prater,” she murmured. “Who could wish him ill? I cannot say as I care for Walton—he eyes women far too lasciviously to suit me. He’s begun to sneer at Mrs. Jansen. The poor creature is frightened of him, I believe.”

“Walton had better be frightened of Gwyneth,” said Napier grimly. “She’s definitely capable of poisoning someone.”

“Oh, it’s not just Gwyneth. There’s enough suppressed rage in that house to blow the roof off should someone strike a match wrong.” Lisette pulled her shawl tighter. “And then there’s that awkward business with Mrs. Jansen.”

He flicked another glance in her direction. “What do you mean?”

“Well, perhaps that’s why Walton sneers at her now?” Lisette felt her face heat. “Because his cause is so obviously lost, and his good looks are useless? I mean, really, don’t all you Englishmen have one of those odd, old-maid aunties tucked in a cupboard somewhere?”

“You seem to become conveniently American when it suits you,” Napier remarked, “and I believe Mrs. Jansen is a widow. But do continue. I find your assessment fascinating.”

“For all that they’re often together, I think Gwyneth and Diana hate one another,” she mused. “Though hate may be too strong a word. And Lady Hepplewood runs over Gwyneth, overruling her household decisions, and seems to quite disdain Diana. In fact, Lady Hepplewood gives the impression of being—well, just grief stricken. Weighed down with it. All the time. I think it’s made her bitter in her old age.”

“Grief stricken? That’s not the term I’d have chosen.”

Lisette shrugged. “But that’s what it is,” she said quietly. “I know grief when I see it. And I comprehend bitterness.”

Napier fell silent a moment. “And Mrs. Jansen?” he finally said. “What do you make of her?”

“She’s very quiet,” said Lisette, “but I like her well enough.”

“I like her, too,” he said. “Does she fancy herself . . . er, emotionally attached to Gwyneth?”

“I think it quite likely,” Lisette acknowledged. “They are in one another’s company whenever Mrs. Jansen’s duties permit. But what can that have to do with Lord Hepplewood’s death?”

“In my experience, passion can be the source of much trouble,” said Napier.

With a wry smile, Lisette considered how very true that was. “For my part, I worry more about Lady Hepplewood,” she said. “Why is she even living in Wiltshire? First we hear the house in Northumberland is drafty and run down. Then Diana—who would surely know—says that’s not the case.”

“Perhaps there’s just no pleasing Lady Hepplewood,” Napier muttered.

“It’s more than that,” Lisette countered. “And now we hear that Gwyneth is angry because Tony spurned her sister Anne—by the way, Anne is coming up from London tomorrow, had you heard? And bringing Miss Felicity Willet with her?”

“I’d heard rumblings, yes.”

“It’s all very odd,” Lisette went on. “Tony’s known in Town as a skirt-chasing wastrel, while Diana paints him a regular homebody who just wants to put his boots up by the fire. I rather like the fellow—one cannot help it—but I think he’s much deeper, and far more shrewd, than he lets on.”

“Or perhaps Diana is naïve?” Napier suggested.

Lisette twitched her shawl tighter again. The clouds scuttled past the moon, once more washing the gardens in light. Something was stuck in the back of her mind. Something that had flitted through her brain in the green bedchamber some days ago, and again just now. But she could not get it to alight long enough to be grasped.

“Oh, well,” she said. “Diana may be a romantic ninnyhammer, but in other matters, she’s no fool.”

“And being romantic generally makes one a fool?” he asked.

She cut him a sharp glance. “Usually, yes.”

“Ah, I begin to grasp your logic.” Napier fell silent for a time. “But have you never had romantic leanings, Lisette? You are, after all, a self-confessed romantic.”

“Yes, but I could ill afford such fantasies,” Lisette retorted. “I was never the perfect princess, Napier, like Lady Anisha Stafford. My life was never a fairy tale. I will always be flawed. Always be different.”

“But surely in Boston there was someone courting you?”

Lisette disliked the direction they were taking. “A few young men, yes,” she said, “especially when Uncle Ashton’s health began to fail and it was clear I’d inherit the paper.”

“Ah, yes, the opportunists,” he said softly.

“Gluttons for punishment, more like,” she said as they turned into the carefully hedged parterres. “The paper lost money more years than not.”

“And so you turned them away, brokenhearted?” His voice was faintly sardonic.

“I saved them from their own folly,” she snapped. “And I had other plans.”

“Yes,” he said grimly. “I think you were too busy pursuing your mad notions of justice and revenge to think of your own future, Lisette. To think of what you might be giving up. I saw you with that child in your arms at Tafton’s. I saw the want and the ache in your eyes. So don’t even bother pretending what you’ve lost doesn’t matter. It bloody well does matter.”

She jerked to a halt on the graveled path. “How dare you talk to me of pursuing mad notions!” she said, her frustration rekindled. “You’ve come all the way to Wiltshire for reasons you cannot even articulate. And whatever I’ve given up, at least the choice was
mine
.”

For a moment he stood stock-still, blocking the path before her. Then, “
Touché
,” he said softly.

Lisette felt herself trembling inside. “You offered earlier tonight to leave me to myself,” she replied. “May I now accept that offer? I should like to sit in the gardens for a while and enjoy the calm.”

He bowed once, very stiffly, at the neck. “But of course.”

Suddenly, and entirely on impulse, Lisette reached out for him, catching his hand. “Napier, I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish—oh, God, how I wish that life were different. That we’d met in a different time and place, and that we’d neither of us have any regret when all this was over.”

His mouth turned up in a sardonic smile. “Damn me for a fool, Elizabeth, but I don’t regret anything we’ve done,” he said. “All I regret is the distance and the deceit.” Then, to her shock, Napier leaned into her and set his lips lightly to her forehead.

And on her next breath, he was gone, turning and striding through the last of the gardens and up the veranda steps. Fleetingly, his broad shoulders and impressive height were silhouetted in the lamplight that spilled from the house. Then Walton pushed the door wider, and without so much as glancing back, Napier vanished.

Drawing her shawl tighter still, Lisette stood in the suddenly cold air watching the house. After a few moments had passed, she saw his shadowy form go striding through the long colonnade. On a sigh, she sat down on the first bench she could find.

Only then did she realize her hands were shaking quite visibly.

He was not going to be satisfied, she realized, with her help here in Wiltshire. And he was not going to be satisfied with the pleasures of her body.

No, Napier wanted her to cut open a vein and bleed the truth. About
everything
. About things she dared not even face herself.

Well, she could not do it. She had stayed the course in the face of far more brutal storms than Napier was capable of stirring.

She only hoped she could stay the course in the face of her own passion.

She wanted to kick herself for her own stupidity. Like the stray cat she was, Lisette lived on her instincts. As Jack Coldwater, the androgynous, red-haired reporter, she had consorted with criminals and thugs—and more dangerous still, politicians—all in order to muckrake for the
Chronicle.
She had followed Lazonby into hells and dark alleys and once even the rookeries of Whitechapel in pursuit of something that might put him back on the gallows.

Her instincts had carried her safely through it all.

But now, because of a desirable man, they might fail her?

Oh,
surely
she was smarter than that.
Tougher
than that.

Or at least, she had been.

Before Royden Napier and his all-seeing eyes.

Lisette had no idea how long she sat alone in the gardens contemplating her own mortal weaknesses, but when at last she rose, it was to find that though the urge to cry had left her and a little of her resolve had returned, her teeth had begun to chatter.