Always a Temptress

Begin Reading

A Preview of
Barely a Lady

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

First and foremost, to all my librarian friends, who have so consistently supported and encouraged me. Especially John Charles, Kristen Ramsdell, Bette-Lee Fox, Joanne Hamilton-Selway, Mary Kay Fosse, and the best research librarian on the planet, the Dowager Duchess of Little Rock, Sally Hawkes.

To everyone who helped make the research for this book fun, with special apologies to Lieutenant John Nurgood of the 52nd Light Infantry, who actually did lead the Forlorn Hope up the breach in the walls of Ciudad Rodrigo. He, too, survived, though badly wounded. For his bravery, Wellington awarded him the sword of the French commandant of Ciudad Rodrigo.

To the usual suspects: The Divas, the Convocation group, the Beau Monde for Regency trivia above and beyond the call of
Jeopardy!
, and Jan and Judy and all the crew at Wired Coffee, my deadline home. To my family at Jane Rotrosen: Andrea Cirillo and Christina Hogrebe. My family at Grand Central: Amy Pierpont, Lauren Plude, Samantha Kelly, Anna Balasi, Brianne Beers, Jillian Sanders, the amazing Claire Brown, who gives me the most luscious covers, and Isabel Stein, who always cleans up my continuity.

To my real family. You’re the only ones who can make me miss a deadline. I love you all madly. And to Rick, who has been sharing this ride for thirty-seven years. I love you most of all.

September 1815

Dorsetshire, England

W
hoever said that no good deed goes unpunished must have been well acquainted with Katie Hilliard. No, Major Sir Harry Lidge corrected himself as he trudged into Oak Grove Manor’s Grand Salon to see her holding court by the front window. Not Hilliard. It was Seaton now. Lady Catherine Anne Hilliard Seaton, Dowager Duchess of Murther. But make no mistake about it. The dowager wasn’t the good deed. She was the punishment.

It had been the good deed that had brought Harry to Oak Grove in the first place. Well, he amended, considering the other occupants of the ornate gold-and-white room: part good deed, part official business, neither of which he was up to right now.

Not that he wasn’t happy to attend his friend Jack’s wedding. He was. He was even glad to spend time with the other members of Drake’s Rakes, who had gathered for the week-long celebration. Not only were they all excellent fellows, they were some of the best minds available to pit against a band of traitors intent on toppling the government.

Which was the official part of the visit. Marcus Belden, Earl of Drake, the leader of their group, had decided that Jack’s wedding was the perfect cover for a strategy meeting. Unfortunately, the gathering had also drawn an unexpected guest. The Surgeon, the most feared assassin in Europe, had made an appearance on the estate, just about the time someone tried to murder Harry’s friend Grace Hilliard.

Harry was just returning from a fruitless search for the man with Grace’s husband, Diccan, and Jack Wyndham, Earl of Gracechurch. At any other time, Harry would have been impatient to get back out and search. He would have demanded the men retreat to Gracechurch’s den so they could rehash what they knew about the threat to both the Crown and his friends, preferably over cigars and whisky. But all he could think of today was that come what may, as soon as the wedding was over, he was going the hell home.

As if hearing Harry’s thoughts, Kate turned to watch him lead the other men into the room. “There you all are,” she caroled, busy trying to wrest a silver flask from the smiling Lord Drake. “Marcus won’t give my back my flask. I expect you to rally to my cause.”

Alongside Harry, Diccan Hilliard chuckled. “One thing I can say for you, cuz,” he greeted her. “You always have your priorities in hand.” Dropping a kiss on Kate’s cheek, he walked by to join Grace on the gold settee.

Kate’s priorities being herself
, Harry thought sourly, stopping in the doorway. They had an assassin on the loose, Grace was still recovering from being poisoned, and here was Kate, brangling over a whisky flask.

“But every girl should have her own flask,” she was saying, her sensual green eyes glinting with mischief as she turned back to her victim.

The leader of their merry little band, Marcus, was suavely blond, elegant to a fault, and stood a full foot taller and at least five stone heavier than Kate. Harry knew that banty cock stance of Kate’s, though: hand on hip, head back, breasts thrust forward. Marcus might as well hand the flask over now. She was going to harass him until she got it back.

“I’ll get you a new one,” Marcus assured her, keeping the flask just out of her reach. “Besides, the portrait inside is wasted on you. Let me ogle it.” Leaning close, he flashed a slow grin. “Since you won’t let me ogle you.”

She laughed, slapping his arm. “Don’t be a nodcock. There is no comparison. And the inscription! ‘Is not the fruit sweet, my first love?’ Really.” She wrinkled her pretty nose. “If that truly is Minette in that painting, her fruit was plucked so long ago, it’s surely long since rotted.”

Harry wanted to spank Kate for her thoughtlessness. Both Jack and Diccan looked away, their wives equally uncomfortable. The woman depicted in the flask’s miniature had been mistress to both men, and betrayed each.

“Oh, I don’t know, Kate, ” Harry couldn’t help muttering. “If you could tell how long ago a woman lost her…freshness by a portrait, yours would look like a pox victim. Instead, as any man in London can tell you, it looks quite…perky.”

If he’d expected her to be upset, he was disappointed. Instead, she laughed, clapping her hands. “Have you seen it, Harry? Tell us everything.”

“Is Kate really painted naked?” Grace asked, looking more worried than Kate.

“As the day she was born.”

“Someone was naked,” Kate corrected him. “But it wasn’t me. I would love to see what the artist thinks I look like, though. Is it really hanging in a gaming hell?”

“You’re saying it’s a hoax,” Harry challenged.

She quirked a wry eyebrow. “Disappointed, Harry?”

“Skeptical.”

Her smile grew suggestive. “Too bad you’ll never know for sure.”

Harry had to admit that the painting hadn’t conveyed that certain something that set Kate apart. A Pocket Venus with gleaming chestnut hair and cat-green eyes, she had a body that even clothed would have had the pope reconsidering his vow of celibacy. She was, in fact, every erotic fantasy a man could have, and she knew it.

Harry wasn’t even within ten feet of her, and his body was reacting: his blood thickened and slowed; the pulses throbbed heavy in his throat. His cock twitched impatiently, and his muscles tautened, anticipating the lunge into sex. On the other hand, when he’d stood among the crowds in McMurphy’s staring up at the lush peaches-and-cream tones of the lounging Kate Seaton, he’d felt nothing more than irritation.

“We need to get them to take that travesty down,” Grace urged Kate, her plain face pursed in distress. “You don’t want to upset your brother.”

Kate’s smile was oddly gentle. “My brother was born upset, Grace. One more surprise isn’t going to overload his heart. Besides. I had nothing to do with it.”

Harry decided that now wasn’t the time to call her a liar.

“It’s too bad, really,” Kate mused on. “My siblings seem to have missed out on the famous Hilliard charm, which has left them all unforgivably judgmental. I choose to believe it is an aberrancy, since, of course, I am the epitome of charm. As, oddly, are all of my nieces and nephews. When they can escape their parents, they are quite good company. It’s quite a puzzle.”

Suddenly she flashed a bright smile. “But enough about me. What did you find?”

Evidently the discussion about the painting was over.

Jack’s fiancée, Olivia, turned to him. “The Surgeon?”

Harry could hear the sharp worry Olivia tried to mask. She, too, had suffered at the assassin’s hands. It was impossible to miss the ropy red scar that stretched from her neck to her hairline from the Surgeon’s knife.

Jack kissed her. “I’m sure he’s scarpered. I still have the men out looking, though.”

She smiled, but her eyes were strained. “Then we don’t know why he was here.”

“He was here to try and hurt Diccan,” Grace said, plucking at her sleeves. Considering the fact that she was still a sickly pale green from the poison that had almost killed her, Harry thought her generous. But then, Grace had always saved her concern for others, and Diccan had been implicated and arrested for the poisoning. Only his status and Harry’s supervision were keeping him out of gaol.

“I’m not in the least injured,” Diccan assured her with a kiss. “All they managed to do was make me even more determined to find that bedamned poem and use it to take down the Lions.”

Drake shook his head. “Still say it’s a bloody stupid name for a bunch of traitors.”

“It may be stupid,” Jack said, “but they’ve been one step ahead of us until now. We need to find out what they mean to do before they manage to kill Wellington.”

Still standing by the window, Kate huffed. “They’re planning to install themselves on the throne.”

“They plan to put Princess Charlotte on the throne,” Marcus corrected, “and rule through her. Personally I’d almost let them do it, just to see how quickly she confounds them. I don’t think our heir apparent is as malleable as they believe.”

“Well,” Jack said, abruptly standing. “For the moment, there is nothing we can do. Guards are posted, Whitehall has been notified, and we have a wedding to enjoy.” Reaching down, he took Olivia’s hand. “My love, why don’t we check on the children?”

From the answering smile on Olivia’s face, his words were obviously some personal code. Taking his hand, she followed him out of the room, her only farewell a quick wiggle of her fingers.

“Excellent idea,” Diccan agreed, bending over to pick up his still-ailing wife. “Come along, Grace. I’m taking you upstairs where you’ll be safe till we find him.”

And that quickly, the parlor emptied out, leaving Harry behind with Kate. “You’d better hurry,” he couldn’t help taunting her. “You’re letting Drake escape.”

Flashing a siren’s smile, she stepped up so close that her breasts almost brushed his waistcoat. “No, I’m not,” she assured him, fluttering her eyelashes up at him. “Because Drake doesn’t want to escape.”

Harry struggled mightily, but he couldn’t evade the seductive pull of her scent, exotic flowers and vanilla. Her body. The purr of her voice. He was no more immune to her now than he had been ten years ago.

She
tsked
. “Too bad, Harry,” she said, running a finger up his Rifleman green uniform tunic. “You had your chance. And nobody gets more than one.”

“Believe me,” Harry assured her through gritted teeth. “Once was quite enough.”

Her smile fixed in place, she swung out the door in a swirl of peacock blue. Harry remained where he was, his posture parade-ground rigid until the moment he heard her heels clatter up the great staircase. Then, with a soft groan, he slumped onto one of the settees and dropped his head in his hands. Damn it. He didn’t have the stamina for her.

He probably shouldn’t have come to Oak Grove at all. He was too tired to think and too worn to be patient. It had been three months since Quatre Bras. The shrapnel he’d taken under his ribs still bedeviled him, and nightmares kept him from sleeping. Add Kate to the mix, and it was a short trip to fury.

He should go upstairs and lie down. He wouldn’t sleep. But maybe he could just lie back and stare up at the cherubs that cavorted on his ceiling for a while, clear his head of Kate and assassins and the past ten years. Maybe he could spend a little time contemplating what he planned to do now that he was selling his commission.

That almost got a smile out of him. His mother was back home, waiting to feed him into insensibility. He had nieces and nephews he hadn’t even met yet. He deserved a few months of lounging around the house before setting off again, for once free of responsibility and schedule and command. From now on the only things he planned to be accountable for were his sketchbook, his protractor, and his boots. Let somebody else sort out the world.

He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there fantasizing about his future when he heard it—a quick, echoing crack. His first muzzy thought was,
I know that sound
. His second was to run. It still took him half a dozen heartbeats to connect the two.

“Bloody hell,” he suddenly snapped and jumped up. Pain shot through his side, and he clamped his arm to his ribs.

Of course he knew the sound. It was a gunshot, somewhere in the house. Adrenaline coursed sluggishly through him as he thundered down the corridor toward the grand staircase. As always happened in action, time seemed to stretch out like taffy. He noticed that the sun poured through the front windows, lighting the dust motes into tumbling fireflies. He could smell the faint whiff of beeswax and lemon, and his boots slid on the highly polished marble floor. He heard shouts, more clattering feet.

He’d just reached the first stair when new sounds intruded. Shattering glass. A scream. And then, somewhere outside, the sickening sound of thuds.

Oh, hell. Without much of a thought, he spun around and headed out the front door instead.

The activity had come from the far side of the building. He ran across the lawn as if voltigeurs were on his heels. When he turned the corner, he looked up, then down. Halfway down the house a white window sash dangled against the brick, shattered and swaying. The glass was gone, shards of it still spinning slowly toward the ground. Below, the boxwoods were crushed, two bodies flung over them like old laundry.

Harry ran for the one he recognized. “Diccan? Diccan!”

Diccan had been struggling to get up. At the sound of Harry’s voice, he slumped back onto the ground and lay there panting. It took only one look at the other body to know it was dead. Bloody froth stained his face, his eyes were fixed and opaque, and there was a jagged branch sticking straight out of his chest. Recognition dawned and Harry gasped. The body was none other than the Surgeon himself. Dead.

But that would wait. Dropping to his knees, he quickly assessed his friend’s injuries. Scrapes, a couple of lumps, and an oddly twisted forearm. Damn lucky, considering.

“You going to live, old man?” he asked.

Diccan offered a wry smile. “’Fraid so. Surgeon’s come a cropper.”

Harry shook his head. “Too bad.”

He could hear more people stampeding through the house. Diccan must have heard it, too, because suddenly he looked frantic. Grabbing Harry’s sleeve, he tried to pull himself up. “Harry. I think Kate is in danger.”

For a second, he froze. “Kate? God’s sake, why?”

“Something the Surgeon said. ‘The whore has the verse.’ Minette isn’t the only one who’s called a whore. At least not by some people I know.”

Harry swore he stopped breathing. “She’s involved in all this?”

“I think so.”

“Then she’s definitely in danger,” Harry said, unable to forget Kate’s self-satisfied smile. “If she’s a traitor, I’ll kill her myself.”