A Duke's Wicked Kiss (Entangled Select) (14 page)

She inhaled sharply and closed her eyes, wishing she had the courage to act on her feelings. “I won’t. I mean, I can’t.” Her words trailed off. “At least not now.”

“Flimsy excuses rolling around in your head?”

The air stirred. She opened her eyes. He stood before her, hands resting on hips, that lovely mouth so inviting. A half-grin formed. “I hope you spend a miserable night in this bed.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I hope you flop around, get tangled in your sheets and lie awake thinking what it might have been like had you come home with me. I hope you spend the dark hours wondering what it would have been like curled naked in my arms.”

Stunned, she lifted on an elbow. “Why on earth would you wish such a thing on me?”

He moved to where Shahira lay, picked up her chain, and with the cat following, strode to the door. “Because, darling, that would make us even. Good night.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

Traveling by foot to the Chatham gathering hadn’t been a bad idea after all, John decided. His walk back might save him from yet another restless night. God knew he’d grown mighty tired of the constant fatigue plaguing him because of
her
. An image danced through his mind, of Suri in her night rail, unaware her covers had slipped, or how the gentle sway of her breasts rubbed her nipples across the thin fabric when she moved. Blast it all, by tomorrow night he’d bloody well have her in his bed. He’d worship her body—every naked, lovely inch of it—until she begged him to slide into her.

In his mind’s eye, he could see her stretched out beneath him, nipping his shoulder as she cried out for release. The erotic vision marched right out of his head and tramped about in his groin. He grew hard as a preacher in a brothel.
Christ,
think about something else
.

He focused his attention on the turbaned guards lining each side of the drive down to the gate. Their ramrod-straight bodies clothed in white uniforms stood out like marble pillars against the darkness, the metal of their rifles glinting in the moonlight. Shahira moved sleekly beside him, her large paws silent against the packed earth.

Despite the heat clinging to him, he picked up speed, hoping to fend off his growing frustration. Between wanting Suri in his bed so badly he could grind his teeth, and the damn puzzle he was desperately trying to piece together regarding his brother…

At the sight of Percival Bradleigh, the corrupt Resident who’d sold the Indian ruby to John’s agent, and Ravi Maurya standing together, John slid into the shadows as silently as the cheetah by his side.

What the hell are those two up to?

A flash of white passed from the Resident’s hand to Maurya’s.

A bloody missive!

The sight knocked the air out of John like a sledgehammer driving into his gut. What the hell kind of information had Bradleigh handed over?

Instead of climbing into his rig after Bradleigh had driven off, Maurya waited. A shadow emerged as a black silhouette, joining Maurya. Bile rose up in John’s throat and he sucked in air.

Maurya glanced to where John stood in the shadows. He held his breath, his mind focused on his cuff pistol, his other hand held low, near the knife in his boot.

For God’s sake, Shahira, don’t move.

Maurya drove off in his buggy, and the turbaned figure took off on a run. John kneeled and hooked Shahira’s chain around the base of a bush. “Stay, girl. I have to go this one alone.”

The cat settled into the brush, stirring sweet jasmine petals to tickle John’s nostrils. He rose and sprinted forward, keeping off the path until he reached the end of the street where the high wall surrounded Delhi.

To his left a shadow moved, then broke into a silent trot.

He knows he’s being followed and, damn it, he’s headed for the emperor’s palace with that missive!

John took off in the same direction, shedding his jacket and waistcoat as he ran. His breath came fast in heaving lungs. Perspiration streaked his face, ran down the back of his neck in rivulets, and pasted his shirt to him like a mustard plaster.

He was going to have to maneuver ahead of the culprit and take him down before his own throat got slit. Instincts told him to make a sharp right, onto Chandni Chowk. Eerily dark and bereft of noisy street hawkers and colorful shoppers dressed in vibrant silks, the market stalls lining the narrow streets were like yawning mouths in the blackness. Zigzagging through the narrow lanes of the market place, he ran like the devil had given chase, cow dung squishing beneath his feet.

Damn those sacred beasts!

He sped up, his chest heaving and on fire. But he had to be ahead of the man now. He slowed, moved silently to the end of the street and pressed his back against a wall where a shuttered window filtered strips of light onto the path. Sliding his tie from his neck, he wrapped it around each hand, yanked it taut into a garrote, and waited.

His ears pricked at the rhythmic padding of feet. He counted, measured the pace, took up any slack in the cravat in his hands, and waited.

Now!

Slipping in behind his quarry, John swung the silk garrote over the man’s head and twisted. The man toppled with a grunt. John landed on top of him and, with a knee into the middle of the courier’s back, wrenched the silk tie until the body went limp.

“Sorry, old chap.” He smacked a fist into the side of the courier’s face to extend his unconsciousness, and dug into his pockets, retrieving the scrap of paper. “Won’t you have one hell of a headache?”

John opened the note and held it to the light spilling through the slats of the shutters.
150
^th
Battalion moving from Meerut to Karnal May 1.
Dilli Chalo

Dilli Challo?
The cry for mutiny?
A sickening crimp wrenched John’s gut, and the hair rose on his nape.
Damn that Bradleigh—setting the troops up for a massacre!

Why was Bradleigh a turncoat? Feathering his nest for the rest of his days?
Those days are short-lived, you cowardly bastard.

John tucked the note back inside the unconscious man’s pocket, and filched a handful of gold coins to make it look like robbery. “Not a bad night’s wage along with what Chatham pays you to guard his family, you son of a bitch.”

He stood, tucked his cravat into his pocket, swiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and set off on a run. He had to make his way home and bathe before returning to the Chatham’s.

No sense searching for his jacket. By morning he was sure to find the buttons to both that and his waistcoat in a vendor’s stall, the cloth draped on some beggar’s spindly frame. Good that he had a similar one at home.

…

The knot in John’s chest melted at the sound of Shahira’s soft churr. She was upset, no doubt, but still lying low in the bushes. “Good girl.”

He unhooked the chain and rubbed at the soft spot behind her ears. “Come along, my beauty. I need to look like I’ve taken you out for your evening’s constitutional.”

Reaching the guards, he forced a slow pace, acknowledged the departing guests as he went, and fought a terrible urge to bolt up the driveway. Blast it all, despite the wide path the people exiting gave Shahira, at this rate it would take forever to get to Chatham.

Take your time.

He gave a nod to passersby. “Evening, Locksley.”

At last he stood to one side of the nearly empty ballroom searching for Chatham. He purposely had Shahira standing at attention, keeping any stragglers at bay.

“Ravenswood,” Chatham called from behind. “I thought you’d long gone.”

John turned.

Concern etched lines on Chatham’s face. “What the devil’s wrong?”

“That apparent?”

“To me. Not likely to the others. I know that look.”

Marguerite approached. “What are you two up to? Ravenswood, I thought you’d left.”

“So I have not.” He spoke to Chatham. “We need to talk.”

“In the marble room. Five minutes,” Chatham responded.

“I’m coming along,” Marguerite said, eyeing the few remaining couples.

“You’ve guests to attend to,” Chatham replied.

Marguerite regarded the two with a look of disdain. “Give me the same five minutes.”

“No,” both men said in unison.

She tried to smile at a woman who turned her way, but it failed to hold. “If you insist on ordering me out of Delhi, I
will
know what is going on.”

Chatham’s words were barely audible. “Vámbéry is in the marble room.”

John nodded in understanding.

“Brevet Major William Hodson is with him, sir.”

“Hodson?” The timing couldn’t be better. He turned to Marguerite. “Lady Chatham, I beg your forgiveness, but there are things you cannot be privy to at the moment. I beg your trust and understanding.”

Marguerite squared her shoulders, clamped her jaw, and leveled incendiary eyes at her husband. “Do not try and stop me,” she said between her teeth, and walked away, her head held high.

“Good God, but my wife can be fiercely stubborn. Sorry.”

“You know, Chatham, I’m not so sure she isn’t right. Given the circumstances, she ought to know the truth about our work.”

“You think?”

“Indeed.”

“Look at her. She’s already sweeping the room clean of riffraff. Lord, but I detest these gatherings.” Chatham raised a hand in salutation to a departing couple and flashed them a convincing smile. “What one does for one’s country.”

“Ah, but the bits and pieces of conversation one puts together later is well worth it,” John said and drifted off toward the exit leading to the marble room.

The couple marched down the hall together. Chatham was good. He doubted Marguerite had a clue about the role her husband played for the queen. “You first,” Ravenswood said, pulling himself away from the wall.

When they entered the marble room, a barely raised eyebrow was the only indication of Vámbéry’s surprise at seeing Chatham’s wife. The man was smooth as an uncracked egg.

Hodson, for that was who the tall, yellow-haired officer with the thick mustache had to be, said nothing as he sized up everyone with keen, cold eyes.

John had seen the man’s dossier. He was a Cambridge man, unusual for someone of his rank, a linguist who knew Hindustani, the best swordsman in the army—with nerves of steel, so the papers read—who led a cavalry as the finest horseman around.

And now, by order of the queen, Hodson was a newly appointed intelligence officer. All at just thirty-six years of age.

John nodded to him.

“Gentlemen,” Chatham said after seating his wife. “Brevet Major Hodson, I’d like you to meet my wife, Lady Marguerite. And your new superior, the head of our little clan, John Fairfax, Lord Ravenswood.”

Marguerite regarded the men in silence, her face devoid of any reaction.

“Told you to remain behind,” Chatham muttered, reaching for the decanter on the table. “Brandy anyone?”

“I think I am beginning to understand your late nights, husband. And yes, I’ll have a double.”

John sat with Shahira between him and Marguerite, and repeated the events of the evening. “Hodson, in your role as both cavalry officer and intelligence officer, I’m going to have to ask you to do double duty.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You need to get to Meerut as fast as you can and detour the Hundred and Fiftieth Battalion for a week. Send them first to Karnal. You’ll meet up with hostile cavalry between there and Meerut, but you’ve got to run some dispatches for General Anson and see to it that Kunwar Singh isn’t a nuisance.”

Hodson’s gaze was so sharp it could’ve etched glass. “I need more men than my cavalry.”

Marguerite stared at her husband, obviously seeing him in a fresh light, while the men worked their way through details of troop movement, recent gossip, and John’s discovery that night.

“What about Bradleigh?” Vámbéry asked.

“We leave him be for now,” John answered. “Chatham, you keep an eye on him. Play your jolly old self and he’ll never know we’re on to him.” Anger, deep and hot, burned in John’s gut. “But in the end, he’s mine. He and Ravi Maurya.”

Marguerite’s cheeks flushed at John’s heated words.

“Suri’s not going to the wedding.” John’s voice was dead calm, unlike the fury beating at his insides. “Not with that sneak thief.”

Chatham nodded. “I agree.”

Marguerite bit her lip.

“What?” Chatham asked. “I don’t like that look. You know something.”

She ran the tip of one finger over her brow. “Suri will go if she has to walk to the wedding. She’ll not back down.” Her voice came from a hollow place, riding on a long sigh.

Something ominous curled in John’s gut. “What’s so blasted important about a wedding?”

Marguerite closed her eyes for a moment. “My sister, as you know, had a high caste mother whose parents set Suri along a path well worn by lions. Suri wants to meet these people who left her to die. Such contact was forbidden when our father was alive. She came here to see me, yes, but more than that, she came to meet her grandmother, the woman who personally took her to the lions.”

“Good God!” Chatham swore, while John raked his hands through his hair and looked to the ceiling for self-control.

“Although I don’t approve or want her to follow through with this,” Marguerite continued, “in my own way, I understand why she wants to bring this to rest, once and for all. I think you know she’s as stubborn as they come and will not give in. She instructed me to go to Bombay without her.”

“That won’t happen,” John said.
If I have to drag her there myself.

“No, it won’t,” Marguerite answered. “I got her to agree to set up the meeting with her grandmother and not stay the full ten days at the wedding. She’s promised to return in three.”

“How’s she coming by these relatives?” John asked.

“Ravi Maurya’s arranging it, which is the reason why he is taking her to the wedding. Her family will be there.”