A Dangerous Liaison With Detective Lewis (3 page)

The mistake she made was not laughing at the ribald remark, but answering truthfully. “I certainly would have tried, sir.”

He took one long stride and caught her in his arms. “A kiss,
la mia belleza
?”

Boldly, she covered his mouth with hers and he returned her ardor. He held her against the wall and his tongue plunged deep as her body softened against him. He eased up enough to brush husky, whispered words over her mouth. “You would have had your way with me after our first tour of the Uffizi.” He teased her lips farther apart with his thumb.

“A brief tryst between the Botticelli and the Raphael?” She opened again to his fervent intrusion, and quickly discovered how lovely it was to tangle with that velvet tongue of his.

Raphael nuzzled her cheek and temple. His fingers plunged into her hair. “I would have insisted on returning to the
pensione
for a long afternoon.” His warm breath traveled over her cheek to her ear. “In my bed.” She experienced an uncontrollable tremble through her body. He smiled, ever so slightly, before trailing soft caresses from the tip of her earlobe down the length of her neck.

He touched her in places he ought not touch. She did not protest as his fingers worked their way under the neckline of her dress. She inhaled so deeply the bodice
loosed itself, or had he nudged the garment down? Her knees trembled as his fingers explored her flesh intimately, brushing over each curve.

“Fanny, much more of this and I will not be able to stop myself,” His voice was gruff with desire. “I made a very grave mistake not accompanying you to Italy. Whatever happens, after tonight—” He lifted a breast and lowered his gaze. She felt like the statue of a half-clothed Sabine in the Loggia della Signoria, all falling folds of gown and wickedly exposed flesh. Her body shuddered as his warm breath wafted over sensitive skin. He dipped lower and used his mouth and tongue to tease up a rose-tinted nipple. A bolt of desire shot through her body, and like a foolish wanton, she had moaned her consent for more.

Even now, thinking back, her cheeks burned as she recalled the creak of a door as it opened and softly closed. A stifled giggle had come from inside the study and a muffled harrumph. Rafe lifted his mouth from her breast, caught her eye and slowly turned his head. She had followed the direction of his gaze through the small square panes of glass and met the stern disapproving glare of her father, standing with his current
maîtresse
.

Fanny jerked herself back to the present. Externally her body swayed gently with the roll of the carriage, while inside she quaked from such heated memories. She swallowed. Her departed father was barely covered with earth and she had spun herself off into a whirlwind of licentious, humiliating recollections.

During her lapse, Ophelia’s vitriolic twaddle had risen
to a fever pitch. “The effrontery of the man, to make such an appearance. Shocking, really. How wretched you must be feeling. Poor dear.”

She did not temper a pointed glare. “Ophelia, it would take every scrap of imagination you possess to fully realize my unsettled frame of mind.”

There was a sharp inhale and a desperate searching about of watery eyes. The very sort of manipulation her aunt was so accomplished at. “Oh, Francine.” She tsked. “Edward is right. I have agitated you. I have made you cross with me.”

With each simpering apologia Fanny sunk deeper into the squabs of the upholstered bench. “Not cross, exactly, but you do go on so.”

Ophelia tried a reproachful pout. “St. Aldwyn or no, he had no business turning up like he did and spoiling your dear father’s burial service.”

She sighed. “Mercifully, I did not see him until well after the Benedictus, so he didn’t entirely ruin the ceremony.” She made no eye contact across the cabin, preferring to gaze out over the blur of rooftops and chimney stacks visible from North Bridge. The stultifying air inside the coach had become insufferable. Fanny snapped open her fan, but found it impossible—no, ridiculous—to maneuver beneath the veil. A drop of perspiration trickled down between her breasts.

She unlatched the window and inhaled several deep breaths. The wind off the Firth of Forth might almost be called tropical, but she was grateful for a breeze. Until this afternoon, the weather had been unusually cool for summer.
Now everything seemed balmy and unbearably . . . sultry.

Her aunt uttered something between a snicker and a snort. “I rather hope he tries to attend the wake, so we can turn him away at the door.”

The suggestion brought Fanny upright in her seat. “We will do no such thing.”

Her aunt’s eyes widened in confusion. “We will not?”

She met the startled woman’s gaze and considered the veritable garden of revenge fantasies she had tended over the years. “I believe the time has come to confront the Honorable Raphael Lewis St. Aldwyn.” She quirked up the edges of her mouth. “He shall be brought to confession, but never fear, Ophelia, there will be no absolution.”

“YOU MAY WELL be the only one in the hall, besides a perfect stranger, who will speak with me.” Rafe winked at his aunt Vertiline.

“Yes, why is that?” Vertiline’s fan fluttered about her face. “After all your sins, Raphael, I adore you still.”

He leaned in. “Please do own up, Auntie.” Rafe spotted the lovely Francine Greyville-Nugent in the corner, in front of several immense potted palms. She was striking in black. Sophisticated. A woman of the world. And that mass of bonny brown hair, all curls and softness twisted up on her head. How he longed to unmake those tresses one pin at a time. And those pouted lips. Good God, had he really forgotten how stunning she was?

“The simple truth is you make me laugh.” Vertiline smirked.

His aunt’s refreshingly candid answer prodded a further evaluation of his own feelings. The truth was he had pushed Fanny’s memory far away. To a place where he did not yearn for her any longer. “Well then, I shall sharpen all my comic traits in order to please you.”

Vertiline nodded toward a stately group standing to one side of an ornate turn of stair. “I see your mother has noticed your arrival.”

The Dowager Countess St. Aldwyn stood beside the Earl St. Aldwyn, his brother Reginald. His small wife, Bess, who barely reached her husband’s shoulder, peeped out at Rafe, sporting a conciliatory expression.

Rafe nodded a cool redress to the chilly stare he received from his mother, then warmed his expression for his brother’s wife. “It appears my sister-in-law might speak with me. At the very least I shall have a translator.” Bess managed a hint of smile while fluttering a pink fan over pinker cheeks.

A footman balancing a tray of small glasses filled with punch bowed. “I do hope this is spiked,” Vertiline said as she raised a glass to sample. Rafe sauntered in the direction of his estranged relations. “Try not to look as if you’re off to the gallows, Raphael.”

Five years had passed. Even if this sorry handful of family had forgiven his gross misconduct, he would never be pardoned for the embarrassment. He wondered if his mother still refused to speak to him directly.

“Hello, Mother. Difficult to meet under such sorrowful
circumstances.” He checked her reaction carefully. A slight faltering of the eye, then a quick dart away. A handsome woman, he noted, with a great deal more gray blended through her hair, though she was otherwise gently marked by age. “But then . . . our meetings are always rather cheerless, wouldn’t you agree?”

Reginald blustered for a moment before pivoting to their mother. “Rafe says hello. Pity about the circumstances—”

“What am I to make of such an appearance?” Hands trembling, the dowager Lady St. Aldwyn appeared to be on the edge of a swoon. “He’ll be the talk of Edinburgh once again. And what of Fanny?” He thought she might choke on the words.

Rafe stepped closer. “Mother.”

A single raised brow signaled his brother, who appeared to be counting figures silently in his head. “Oh yes, something about . . . appearances, badly done?”

Bess ceased batting her eyelashes long enough to wink at Rafe. She pressed a hand to her husband’s arm. “Allow me, Reggie dear?”

Rafe sucked in a deep breath and exhaled gently. He did not entirely agree with his brother’s choice of wife. She had always been an enthusiastic meddler in family affairs. And she was flirtatious with him. At times, most inappropriately so. He nodded a bow. “So kind of you, Bess.”

This tedious business of not speaking had gone on for so long no one in the immediate family thought much about these repeated recitations. Rafe so despised the
charade, he sought to torture his accommodating relatives by asking questions that required long-winded serpentine answers, which everyone was forced to endure. Twice.

“Please remind my dear mother I ventured home for holidays at least . . .”

His sister-in-law held up a single finger.

He cleared his throat. “. . .
once
in the past five years, enduring several days of—can one really call this
conversation
?”

Mother remained stone-faced, eyes darting about. “What plans has he to stay on after the funeral reception? Shall I have a room prepared?”

“Actually, I’m here in Edinburgh on police business.”

Mother’s eyes rolled back in her head.

Bess dropped her jaw.

Reginald grunted.

Rafe grinned. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss the particulars,” he edged his way around his small circle of family. “So please don’t inquire.” He searched the room for Fanny. Where was she? He scanned the parlor and the conservatory, which today served as a kind of informal supper room. Several buffet tables were piled high with tea sandwiches and sweet delicacies. His stomach growled. Ah, there she was by the punch bowl with a man Rafe recognized. The small hairs on the back of his neck certainly took notice. The attentive gentleman poured Ambrose Greyville-Nugent’s surviving daughter a glass of blush-colored refreshment.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Rafe meandered off for a closer look.

Effacing himself among the guests at the sumptuous buffet, he trailed along in the queue toward the sweets—one in particular. Their eyes met across the table, between tiered platters heaped with delicate desserts. Rafe plucked a candied cherry from atop a petit four, dropped it onto his tongue, and savored the sweetness of her surprise.

Her brows met and mouth bowed before Rafe could brace himself. The expression was so . . . Fanny. She took his breath away, momentarily. Then she slipped into the throng of ravenous mourners and out of sight.

How far he had pulled away these past few years. There was a distance, an almost palpable estrangement from everyone, with the exception of Vertiline. In fact, after his fall from grace, Rafe had set out to prove to the family that he was a most incorrigible degenerate. That he had, in fact, done Fanny Greyville-Nugent a rather unique kindness. One or two of his relations had begun to tolerate him as the family libertine. Every noble bloodline should have one.

Trumping the five-year-old scandal was another equally distasteful aspect of his life—an affront to the legacy of St. Aldwyn and, arguably, the most unpardonable sin of all. He was now Detective Inspector Raphael Lewis. A title that was his alone.

His job was as dangerous as it was rewarding, a vocation that occupied every waking moment of his day. These last years had passed quickly, with very little thought given to the life he had given up in Edinburgh. And too, there were the plentiful and varied distractions of London.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, St. Aldwyn—a man in such disfavor. Only a scoundrel would dare show his face on a day such as this.”

He pivoted toward a sober-faced fellow of earnest expression. “Indeed,” Rafe said, without demur. “I might even go so far as to call myself a cad.” He recognized his accuser as the attentive gentleman hovering around Fanny in the supper room. Nigel Andrew Irvine. An old university chum—a rather capricious fellow, who at one time had sought out Rafe’s friendship. “Nigel, I might say good to see you, but that would be entirely dishonest of me.” Rafe adopted a bored, vaguely amused expression. “In keeping with our history, I shall leave that to you.”

His challenger toggled one brow up, and the other down in a bewildering mixture of curiosity and disdain. “Smartest thing Fanny ever did was cry off her engagement to you.”

“Ever the patient suitor, Nigel? What is it? Five years and still no answer?”

“Patience requires control over oneself,” Nigel smirked. “Something you know nothing about.”

Rafe pictured a brutal scenario involving Nigel’s broken, bloodied nose, among other wounds. He shook off the thought, and refused to get worked up about an unhappy incident that happened long ago.
Unhappy incident
was putting it mildly. He had suffered through a trial of lies, deceit, and betrayal. A ruse he should have seen through, but hadn’t, until it was too late.

“Ready to throw down the gauntlet, Nigel? Just say the word. I’m game anytime you are.” He raked a steely
gaze over the supercilious man. Irvine had always been considered attractive by the ladies, but he’d thickened some. He could imagine Nigel in a few years, with a potbelly and a harrumph.

“Since you appear to be on friendlier terms with Fanny . . .” Rafe used his most affable grin. “Might I ask you to intercede for me? I desperately need to speak with her on a private matter.”

“Fanny is a woman of delicate sensibilities and fragile temperament—”

“So, you don’t know her at all.” Rafe studied the stiff, arrogant fellow. A wave of longing threatened his composure. He recalled the spirited little harridan of his youth, and the stunning young woman she had grown up to be.

Nigel’s neck and shoulders stiffened. “Fanny is indisposed at the moment. Strain of the funeral and your undesirable presence, I’m afraid, has forced a brief respite.” Nigel puffed himself up. “What you ask is not only impossible, I find it objectionable. I’m going to have to ask you to—”

“Message for the Honorable Raphael Lewis St. Aldwyn.” A footman held out a salver. Rafe picked up the note card centered on the silver tray.