A Wicked Lord at the Wedding (20 page)

His eyes lit up. “Indeed. And the tournament—” “—will proceed full tilt as planned.”

Eleanor was relieved when she entered the house and found a note from Sebastien explaining that he had gone to his club for an early supper. He promised he would return at a reasonable hour, and would she wait up for him?

Good heavens, this marriage had waited years for his return. What possible difference could a few hours make?

“Will I wait up for him?” she muttered, marching into the drawing room to drop his note into the fire. “No. I will not.”

The Masquer had work to do. Only two more letters. “Love will wait,” she said. “But duty—”

She spun from the fireplace in embarrassment, noticing Mary at the door with a worried look.

“It wasn’t bad news was it, madam?”

Eleanor gazed at the leaping flames. “I haven’t decided.”

Mary slipped into the room. “You shouldn’t breathe that smoke. It’ll damage your lungs.”

“You are good to me, Mary.”

The maid stared at the smoldering letter in consternation. “I do wish, madam, that you were more good to yourself.”

Eleanor looked up slowly. “What do you mean?”

Mary shook her head, her eyes averted. She knew. Of course she knew. She mended Eleanor’s costumes, observed her comings and goings. She had never uttered
a word. When the other servants stood whispering at the door about the Masquer’s latest scandal, Mary had not participated, except to remind the staff that there was work to be done.

“Draw me a light bath,” Eleanor said in a soft voice. “And lay out my costume.”

“Another masquerade?” Mary asked in unhidden disapproval. “I thought the season for these events was over.”

Eleanor felt both annoyance and affection for this concern. “There won’t be many more parties.” She turned decisively from the fire.

Mary followed her halfway to the door. “His lordship will need his costume, too?”

“No.” She hesitated. “But make sure the fire is still burning when he comes home. In fact, have the footmen heap on every last coal in the cellar. I want him to have a warm welcome.”

Filching a letter from London’s most exclusive brothel on Bruton Street presented the riskiest challenge she had attempted so far. Audrey Watson maintained an elegant house, so well guarded that even if Eleanor managed to gain entrance, she might not as easily escape. She had been studying the original architectural plan of the house for a month. One of the duchess’s contacts had provided her with a skeletal description of the interior design.

This information provided limited help. There were said to be secret traps laid throughout the house to catch intruders—journalists who hoped to expose an MP as well as other young aspiring sinners who’d risk life and limb to brag they’d spent an evening at Mrs. Watson’s.

Only a select few gentlemen were invited into the celebrated rooms. Others paid a fortune for the privilege. The privacy of the guests was as legendary as the pleasures—culinary, intellectual, and carnal—that Audrey and her trained staff offered.

Eleanor had never taken a risk so weighted
against her before. If she failed, the game would be over.

If she succeeded, she and the duchess would crow together in delight for the rest of their days. What lady in London wasn’t a little curious as to what went on inside Mrs. Watson’s house?

She had not discussed infiltrating the seraglio with Sebastien. It seemed he was too familiar with brothel designs as it was. She could only be grateful he did not seem to be familiar with the ladies of such an establishment. Deceptive she and her husband might be. Drawn to danger, yes. But not unfaithful.

In hindsight, Eleanor would realize it had been far too easy to break into the House of Venus.

Mrs. Watson’s bodyguards, virile young men in expensive evening wear, were known to casually patrol the establishment and its environs while blending in with the beautiful guests whose personal tastes they were paid to protect.

She had been warned to find a sentry at every point of entry or exit. On the balconies, at the stairs, and outside the private chambers in which a guest could enjoy any manner of unmentionable acts. But no one intercepted her in the private garden behind the house. No guard dogs came bounding forth from the neatly trimmed bushes.

And when she used her cutter to unhook the iron clasp of the drawing room window, she encountered only an unnatural darkness.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected. Perhaps
some sort of orgy in which one shy guest wouldn’t be noticed.

She climbed gingerly over the sill and stood, listening to the muted drifts of laughter, the clink of glasses, and the occasional footstep from the upper floors.

The room appeared empty. Nor did anyone seem to protect the stairwell hidden behind the false bookcase that rose to the plasterwork ceiling. She closed the curtains to conceal the open window, in the event she could escape as easily as she had entered.

With one last look around the room, she proceeded to climb the steep staircase.

She had prepared a story in case she was caught. What young fellow did not wish a peek inside this infamous establishment? She was but a curious lad.

She’d never slept with a woman—one had only to look at her unimpressive frame to understand why the ladies shunned her. She would be the envy of all the boys if she could claim she’d broken into the house and retrieved some small evidence of her visit.

A tassel from a pillow. A comb threaded with a courtesan’s hair.
A letter. Find the letter. Escape. Do it. Don’t think. Act
.

Her heart thumped in her throat. She reached the top of the stairs and opened the narrow door onto a torchlit hall. Where were the infamous guards?

Her skin prickled in foreboding. She glanced over her shoulder. Quiet as a mausoleum. The walls must have been designed to muffle sound.

Her intuition cautioned her she was walking into trouble. She ignored it. The thrill of danger pulsed in her blood. This could well be the Masquer’s last appearance. Let him at least go out with a tale to tell.

Sebastien studied the distorted shadows that moved in the fog. He could barely make out the bulky shape of Will’s carriage down the street. He knew that Mrs. Watson’s guards had noted its appearance. For all he knew they had also spotted him.

Still, if he had been Will, he would have parked in front of the half-timbered inn at the corner and acted as if he were a patron.

But then he wouldn’t have brought Eleanor here at all. He stepped forward involuntarily as a figure emerged from Mrs. Watson’s house, striding in the other direction.

Not Eleanor. She was taking too long. Should he intervene?

His family name alone would allow him entrée into this house. A Boscastle carried carte blanche in the half-world, or so Sebastien had heard. He couldn’t bloody well knock at the door asking for his adventurous wife. And if he interrupted her, or ended up thwarting her escape, she would never forgive him.

Then again he would not forgive himself if she came to any harm.

Ten minutes crawled by. Then twenty. Too long.
Why had he pretended not to know what she was about? She was obviously in trouble. She might even have been accosted by a guest who thought a lady in male clothing was one of the house’s offerings.

Eleanor had half-expected her adventure to come to a sudden end. She had found not one, but two letters from Lady Viola Hutchinson in Mrs. Watson’s room. She had not expected Mrs. Watson to find her, though.

She turned, assessing the reflection that wavered in the myriad Venetian glass mirrors on the wall. An attractive, auburn-haired woman in wine silk had entered the room from a side passageway. Two husky young bodyguards waited in rigid attention at the double doors.

She considered her options. None. No possible flight back down the too-quiet hallway, nor through the iron-barred windows, artfully concealed behind vermillion damask curtains. She would have to wait for Mrs. Watson to make her move.

“Are you armed?” asked the woman whose elegant demeanor more bespoke a society matron than it did the most popular courtesan in the city.

“Yes.”

“Then be a good boy and give the guards your weapons.”

Again there was no choice. Eleanor withdrew her pearl-inlaid pistol and surrendered it before she could be searched.

“Now then,” the other woman said, raising her
delicate shoulders in question. “What are you doing inside my house?”

Could she bluff her way through this? Probably not, but she’d give it a damned good try. “I was curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat. What did you hope to find in my room?”

“You, perhaps. Is there any better attraction in London for a country boy?”

Mrs. Watson’s eyes darkened in dangerous amusement. “Your first time?” She began to untie the bows of her elbow-length sleeves. “Leave us alone, please,” she said to her guards without glancing around.

The men disappeared. A key turned in an outer lock, a loud sound in the silence. Eleanor felt a peculiar sense of detachment. Of all the fates that could have befallen the Masquer, being invited into a courtesan’s bed was the last she had anticipated.
Talk yourself out of
this
one, clever Elle
.

“Disrobe,” Mrs. Watson said, lifting her hand to unknot her heavy coil of hair. “You’ve caught me in an amorous mood.”

Of all the sodding luck
.

Eleanor glanced up at the mirror. “I’d prefer to keep my clothes on, if it’s all the same to you,” she replied in the gruffest voice she could manage.

“We can’t make love properly if we’re dressed. Come, boy, don’t tell me you’re shy. Not when you break in here armed.”

“Your guards just confiscated my pistol, madam.”

Mrs. Watson stared down meaningfully at Eleanor’s belt. “A young man has other weapons.”

God help her. The Masquer had London’s most notorious whore on his hands, in a mood to be lewd, no less. “I guarantee that you would be disappointed in my—”

“What do you know of oral stimulation?”

Fire rushed to Eleanor’s face. “I think conversation is a lost art.”

Mrs. Watson laughed. “You’re either the bravest young man who has ever broken into my house, or the most foolish.”

“May I not be both?” Eleanor asked, blinking in horror as Audrey backed her into the sideboard.

“In this house you can be or do anything you desire—”

“I desire my freedom.”

“—at a price.” She gestured with a white perfumed hand, suddenly a woman of business. “However, I find you intriguing. Take off your mask.”

“No,” Eleanor said.

“Take—”

Audrey reached out without warning and wrenched Eleanor’s gloved wrist back against her arm. The two letters that she had folded in the cuff of her glove slipped to the carpet. Audrey stared down in a silence that seemed to last for hours, and when she finally looked up, the glitter of understanding in her eyes dashed Eleanor’s hopes to death.

“You,” the woman breathed in amazement, studying Eleanor up and down. “
You’re
the Mayfair Masquer—and it’s letters you’re after. Not jewels. Not forbidden pleasure. Why?”

Another nail in the coffin. Mrs. Watson would have to be an intelligent whore. A perceptive one. “I do this for the hell of it.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place. I’ll give you hell—”

Eleanor shrugged. “Do it.”

“Every woman in London wants you.”

Eleanor laughed at the irony.

“But you are mine,” Audrey said in a thoughtful undertone. She shook her head. “It has to be blackmail,” she mused. “Which in my case, at least, is an utter waste of effort. I have more skeletons in my closet than there are in the Cross Bones Graveyard.”

“It isn’t blackmail.” She untied her mask, sighing in self-disgust. “And I’m not anything
you
want, I assure you.”

She stared into Audrey’s eyes, defiant, defeated, it made little difference. She was in no position to resist, and Mrs. Watson was too experienced to believe her pretense.

Wait. That was all she would do. One never knew what could happen by waiting. The walls could cave in. London could catch fire again.

Audrey stared at her in disbelief. “A woman,” she whispered, lifting her fingers to her throat. “And if your motive is not blackmail, then—”

“Just a … a lark. A means to enliven an otherwise empty life. Don’t read anything into it. I’m a fraud—”

“Who do you work for?” Audrey asked, lowering her hand to cut her off.

“King Midas of Phrygia.”

Audrey laughed. “Don’t we all?” She bent to pick up the letters on the carpet. Her face pensive, she ran a manicured thumbnail across the crackled wax seals. “I don’t know who you really are, or what you want, but I can find out. Let us not underestimate each other.” She looked up levelly into Eleanor’s face. “I can be your dearest friend or worst enemy.”

Eleanor knelt impulsively, her voice low with urgency. “I work for the good of England.”

“As I also do,” Audrey said in acid tones.

“But that is all I can say.”

“The good of England—do you expect me to believe that the Masquer’s mischief is a screen for heroics?”