Always a Temptress (28 page)

Kate was back to smiling. “Desist, you scrubby brat. You shouldn’t speak that way of your parents. It is not your job to set their backs up. It is mine.”

“Well, no one does it better,” the girl agreed, all but twirling on her toes. “Come to our weekend, Kate. You could save it from being deadly dull.”

Kate glared as if she meant it. “So you would have me immolate myself on the family altar just to keep you from being bored?”

Elspeth blinked her big green eyes. “Why, yes. Because when I get bored, I become quite susceptible to irresistible impulse.”

Kate hadn’t realized that Harry had caught up to them until she heard him laugh. “Definitely related to my Kate.”

Introductions passed without incident, and Kate found herself becoming envious of the enamored pair. “And listen, you two,” she said, holding each by the hand. “If you need a refuge during the madness, you know where I live. I’ll never breathe a word to any of the parents.”

Elspeth’s giggle was like a waterfall. “Can I see the infamous painting?”

“Absolutely not,” Kate said, laughing. “It makes me look like a cow. Now, off with you two before your mother catches us plotting against her.”

Harry was escorting Kate through the crowds out on the street a few minutes later when he looked down at her. “I’m very glad your mother made sure you got her emeralds,” he said, his voice low.

Kate looked up to see a softer smile in his eyes. “What? Why?”

“Your mother was a saint. Kind and generous and happy, with a joy for life that seemed to include everyone. I’ll tell you sometime about her summer parties for all the neighboring children. She was a mean cricket player. She laughed constantly, and everyone adored her.”

Kate quirked an eyebrow, bemused by the conversation. “I believe you had a tendre for my mother, sir.”

“Worshiped her with every bit of my four-year-old heart.”

Kate tilted her head, her heart slipping oddly in her chest. “What made you think of her now?”

His smile broadened. “You’re very much like her.”

“Oh, yes,” Kate agreed. “I look just like her.”

But he shook his head and smiled. “I’m not talking about your looks.”

Kate slowed to a halt right there in the middle of the jostling crowd, Harry’s words catching in her chest. Her eyes burned with emotion; her defenses shuddered. He looked so sincere, so proprietary. How could he mean it? She had been terrible to him. She had protected herself by constructing a wall of distance around her and tried so hard to keep him out.

“Harry,” she said, coughing to clear the constriction in her throat. “About your engagements…”

Suddenly someone cried out next to Kate and slammed into her. She stumbled back, her arms flailing, as the crowd shifted again. She was terrified she would fall beneath the passing coaches. Before she could, though, Harry was there, and she was in his arms. He stumbled and grunted, and she thought he’d pulled something. Behind him an orange girl tossed a bright orange in the air to a laughing young dandy and skipped off. The rest of the crowd closed in again.

“You all right, Harry?” Kate asked, brushing off her dress.

“Sore ribs,” he said brusquely. “Think I pulled them.”

Kate looked around for Bea and Chuffy, who had become separated. She couldn’t see them anywhere.

“Harry,” she said. “You’re tall. Can you see Chuffy?”

She had just put her hand on Harry’s arm for balance as she went up on her toes when Harry swayed and stumbled again. She glanced up to see an odd look on his face. “Harry?”

He peered down at her. “I think…”

He swayed again. She reached out to grab onto him and he flinched. She slid her arm under his so she could grasp his waist. Something was wrong. Harry’s coat was wet. She pulled her hand away and looked at her white kidskin glove.

“My God, Harry. You’re bleeding.”

He stared at her glove, which was stained and glistening. “Oh, bugger,” he muttered, and that quickly his knees gave out.

Kate didn’t scream. Kate abhorred screamers. She yelled. “Chuffy! Drake! Braxton! Bea! Help!”

She didn’t know why she called them all, except that they had been orbiting all night. As if choreographed, they all materialized out of the crowd.

“It’s Harry!” she yelled, down on her knees, trying to support him. “He’s hurt!”

Bea dropped to Harry’s other side. “‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’”

“She’s right,” Harry said, sounding bemused as he sat on the ground. “I believe…I’ve been stabbed.”

“Get me some brandy!” Kate called up to the men. Instinctively she rooted through her cloak pockets with her free hand before remembering that she no longer had her own flask. Drake had made off with it back at Olivia’s wedding.

“You’re not stripping me in the middle of Katherine Street so you can pour brandy on a stab wound,” Harry said, his voice weakening.

Supporting more and more of his weight, Kate fought a flood of panic. “Don’t be absurd,” she snapped. “The brandy’s for me. I get sick at the sight of a man ruining his good clothes by lounging in the dirt. Oh, why did I let Drake make off with my flask? Chuffy! Get the coach!”

“I didn’t see who stabbed him,” Kit Braxton protested. “I swear. I stayed close to make sure no one tried to hurt Lady Kate.”

“Someone was stabbed?” somebody asked.

Kate didn’t hear an answer. By now there was shouting and confusion, people running toward and away from a possible attack. The Rakes gathered around Harry and Kate to keep them from being trampled in the excitement. The surreal light from gas lamps cast weird, undulating shadows across faces, and glinted off gems. Chuffy was in the street waving his arms like a bowler, and Bea was tossing bee-embroidered handkerchiefs at Kate like giant snowflakes. Harry was telling everyone that he was all right, truly he was, even as his voice faded along with his color. And Kate, one hand pressing a wad of snow-white handkerchiefs against the slash in the back of Harry’s coat, was suddenly, completely distracted. Somebody had just pressed a chased silver flask into her free hand. She couldn’t stop staring at it.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed. “I was wrong. We really did have the verse all along.”

I
t’s nothing,” Harry kept insisting, even as they all but carried him up to his room. Finney met them all at the front door and sent a footman off for a doctor, and Mudge met them in Harry’s room, already carrying hot water. Kate began pulling at Harry’s neckcloth the minute he reached his room and didn’t finish until she had his bloody coat, waistcoat, and shirt in her hands.

“It’s a stab wound, old man,” Drake informed him, bent over Harry’s back. “Deuced close to your lung. Can you breathe?”

“I’m talking, aren’t I?”

But he grunted every time he moved. Drake was right. Harry had missed mortality by less than an inch. Maybe not that far, if he kept losing blood. His shirt and jacket were saturated, and the neat slice below his ribs was still freely bleeding. Kate had spent two months caring for the injured after Waterloo. It had never made her feel as sick and giddy as the sight of Harry’s bleeding back.

“Lie down, Harry,” she said, standing in front of him. “You’re swaying so much, you’re making me dizzy.”

“You’re not going to become vaporish on me, are you?” he asked with a wan smile. “Mudge has hurt me worse shaving.”

“Right there, Major,” Mudge agreed equably as he cleaned off the wound. “Almost took off your nose once, sir, a mornin’ you was worse for the night spent at the colonel’s card game. Couldn’t hold still to save your life.”

The boy sounded so calm, one would be forgiven for thinking he was unaffected if one didn’t notice his expression. Kate couldn’t help seeing the flash of pain and fear in his eyes, as if he were the one injured.

Merde
, she thought, wishing she weren’t so shaky. This was unacceptable. She did not want to spend her life fearing for Harry’s. She didn’t like the hard, hollow dread that had exploded in the pit of her stomach when she’d seen him go down, the instinctive need to hold him as tightly as she could, as if she could protect him after the fact. She didn’t
like
feeling sick with fear.

“I have ceased to be amused, gentlemen,” she announced, pulling off her bloodstained gloves and tossing them in the corner. “We need a different entertainment.”

Off came the eardrops and bracelets. Kate barely noticed Bivens collect them from the dresser. She was busy helping Mudge ease Harry down onto his side.

“Harry,” she asked, kneeling down so she could hold his hand and meet him eye-to-eye. “Do you think you can refrain from dying long enough for me to change into a dress more suited for surgery?”

He was deathly pale, but he grinned. “I told you, sweetheart. I have no intentions of cutting my stick. And I wish you didn’t have to change. I’m quite partial to that gold.”

Kate scowled. “The color doesn’t go at all well with blood. Now behave yourself. I’ll be back.”

She had already turned for her room when he stopped her. “Kate?”

She spun back around.

“Did you really say you knew where the verse is?”

“I did.”

Suddenly everybody was staring. “Well, where the hell is it?” Drake demanded.

Kate’s smile was hard. “You have it.” And then she walked out of the door.

Harry hated the liquid, insubstantial feel of injury. Not the pain; he was used to that, even though this pain was beginning to set in with a vengeance. It was always the same with piercing injuries. At first, all you felt was that sudden shock, the sensation that your defenses had just been breached. It wasn’t until minutes later that the nerves realized what had just happened. And when they did, they set up the burning, howling agony that rode on every breath. Especially with Mudge pressing something that felt like gravel against the wound to stop the bleeding

He hated to be an infant, but he was glad he was already lying down. It would have been positively humiliating to swoon in his wife’s arms. And wasn’t it just like Kate to drop her bombshell and exit the room like an actress at the end of her scene?

“Kate!” Drake yelled, already stalking after her. “Wait!”

“Touch that doorknob, old man,” Harry growled, “and I’ll be forced to have Chuffy mill you down.”

Looking apologetic, Chuffy nodded. “Have to do it, too. Not the thing. Lady
en dishabille
.”

Drake wheeled around on them. “Did you hear her? What did she mean?”

“I’m sure she’ll remember until she’s had a chance to change.”

“Says
we
have it,” Chuffy reminded Drake as he walked over to poke the fire into flames. “Don’t suppose you remember where we put it.”

“Don’t be an ass, Chuff.” Abruptly Drake sat down. “If I knew where it was, I wouldn’t have been waiting around on Lady Catastrophe in there.”

“Careful with the monikers,” Harry warned, feeling muddled enough that he couldn’t seem to focus. The best he could do was lie there watching the door to Kate’s room until either she or the doctor arrived.

“Mill you down again,” Chuffy warned Drake, who just smiled.

“Didn’t anybody else see anything?” Kit Braxton asked. “I swore I kept an eye out, and the crowd looked perfectly normal. No furtive movements, no lurking cutpurses.”

“Must have been somebody,” Chuffy mused. “Harry’s stabbed, after all.”

“But who?” Kit demanded, leaning against the fireplace.

“The orange girl,” they suddenly heard from the doorway.

Harry saw Kate sweep through the door clad in a surprisingly practical gray dress topped with a big cook’s apron that was oddly complemented by the tiara she hadn’t taken the time to remove from her lusciously piled hair.

“What orange girl?” Drake demanded, his pacing halted mid-stride.

Kate stopped, hands on hips, head tilted. “I was knocked over. Just as Harry caught me, the orange girl bumped against him. Didn’t you see her flipping the orange to the fellow in the crowd?”

Chuffy nodded enthusiastically. “Lovely color.” He saw the grins and blushed. “Orange.”

Kate nodded, checking Harry’s forehead with the back of her hand. “I think she also had a knife.”

Harry was distracted by the cool brush of her skin. He didn’t think he’d ever felt such a soothing touch. “Why stab Harry?” Chuffy asked.

Harry saw understanding dawn in Kate’s eyes and wanted to hold her. She suddenly looked so vulnerable. “I don’t think she meant to,” he said. “I got in the way.”

Kate didn’t let her gaze rest on Harry long enough for him to reassure her. Lord, was that guilt blooming in her eyes? “Kate. She missed.”

“But it was a knife,” Chuffy protested. “Ain’t that the Surgeon’s habit?”

“It seems there really is another one,” Kit mused.

Kate tilted her head. “And it couldn’t be a woman?”

They all looked back and forth at one another.

“What color hair?” Drake asked.

“Blond,” Chuffy said immediately. “Couldn’t see her eyes. She was laughin’. Was thinkin’ she’d make a lovely
chère amie
.” He quickly ducked his head. “Sorry.”

Harry couldn’t help it. He laughed, because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. “You’re absolutely…right, Chuff. She does.”

Drake looked sick. “Minette?”

“The woman who shared half the Rakes?” Kate stopped, closing her eyes to concentrate, which just stole Harry’s concentration. She looked so like a young girl when she did that. “Yes,” she finally said, eyes opening. “It could very well be. She certainly had breasts like pomegranates.”

Drake blinked. “What?”

She waved him off. “I need to focus on Harry right now. Mudge,” she said. “Get me something to lay under him. He’s ruining a perfectly good bed with all that blood. Kit, would you mind telling Finney to get cook started, and to round up some spirits? I have a feeling we’ll need them.”

“I certainly do,” Harry managed. “You’re making me…dizzy. Slow down.”

She immediately came over and crouched before him again, her expression taut. At least until she saw that Harry was watching her. Then, like a curtain lifting, she gifted him with a dry smile. “If this marriage is to remain felicitous,” she said, brushing his hair off his forehead, “you must not think to become more interesting than I.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Knives bore me.”

“Only if you’re the one on the receiving end. I promise. By the morning, my parlor will be packed with the curious trying to winkle the story out of Bea.”

“You’d subject Bea to that nonsense?”

She waved him off. “She loves nothing better than confounding them all. The ones who understand will stay. The others will give up and leave us in peace.”

“And you?”

“Will obviously be up here spooning restorative broths into my wounded hero’s mouth.” She never moved, never took her gaze from Harry’s, which made him oddly giddy. “Might as well. We won’t be getting to Eastcourt tomorrow.”

If possible, Harry felt worse. “Sorry.”

She flashed a too-bright grin. “Drake, you have been inordinately patient. Should I tell you about the verse?”

Harry could hear Drake shuffle, as if holding himself back. “If you please.”

Still, she didn’t look away from Harry, which was doing odd things to his heart. It would have done odd things to his poor, unfulfilled cock if he’d had a bit more blood in him. He’d been so good the last few days: patient, understanding;
generous
, damn it. He had done everything he could to make Kate comfortable with lovemaking before taking it to the next step, all the while denying himself what he wanted with a fierceness that stunned him. He wanted to sheath himself inside her. Open her, literally, to his invasion, to his domination, to his vehemence. He wanted fire and passion and mindless need.

And yet, the minute he’d seen the first flash of terror in her eyes, he’d held back. He kept holding back, until he thought he’d go mad. He wanted her. He wanted all of her. More than the feel of her coming apart in his arms, although that was pure heaven. More than the torture of her fingers running up and down his shaft. She brought him to a climax; it wasn’t hard to do these days. But he could do that himself. He couldn’t bury himself so deeply in her that he might never find his way back out.

And now, thanks to Minette, he was going to have to wait even longer.

“Harry?”

He startled, realizing that he’d wandered off. The sight of those keen green eyes was enough to tighten his body all over again, even though it would do him no good. Not now. Probably not for days. Damn it.

“Yes, Kate. I want to know what you were going to tell Drake.”

She smiled and turned to Drake. “‘Is not the fruit sweet, my first love?’” she said.

For a minute, silence reigned in the room. The words were familiar; Harry could hear them. He could almost see them. He also saw the sweet slope of Kate’s breast, and thought about putting it in his mouth.

He blinked. Coughed. Not the time for that. He had to pay attention.

“Devil fly away with me,” Chuffy suddenly said, jumping up. “Gracechurch’s flask! The mistress.”

Kate’s smile was almost beatific. “Indeed, Chuffy. That line—‘Is not the fruit sweet, my first love?’—is what is inscribed across the miniature on Jack’s flask. A miniature of the woman who was both Jack Gracechurch and Diccan’s mistress. The ubiquitous Minette. Drake helped himself to it back at Gracechurch’s.”

Giving Harry a quick kiss, Kate stood and walked out of his vision.

“Hey!” he protested, feeling her loss in the deepest recesses.

“Hush,” he heard behind him. “I am about to minister. Don’t distract me.”

And without any more roundaboutation, she evidently took whatever Mudge had been using to apply pressure to his back and pressed with all her might.

“Ow!” Harry howled as she ignited a fresh wave of pain.

“Hush, you baby,” she said, her voice preternaturally bright. “Do you want to have all your friends think you a fribble?”

“I don’t care what my friends think. That hurts!”

She dropped a kiss on his shoulder and almost distracted him. “Better?”

He huffed. “It’s a start.”

“But what does it mean?” Drake demanded.

“The verse?” Chuffy asked. “Does it have to mean anything?”

“You’re sure there wasn’t anything else inscribed on the flask,” Drake said.

“Not that I ever saw,” Kate assured him. “I recognized it, though.”

“What about the bishop’s pin, though?” Drake asked. “Was that a mistake?”

She shook her head. “No. No, I think it’s part of the same poem.
God
I wish I could remember where I’ve seen it. Because both lines are off by just a bit.”

“How do you know?”

She shrugged. “Haven’t a clue. Maybe if I looked again. Where is the flask?”

“I turned it over to Baron Thirsk,” Drake said. “He wanted his lads to look at it.”

Harry could hear a carriage clatter up to the house and stop. Obviously the doctor. Harry hated doctors almost as much as he hated injury. More than once he’d only held off amputation by refusing to sleep. Bastards were far too happy to be lopping things off. In fact, last time, it had been Ian Ferguson who’d chased off the surgeons, letting loose a Scottish war cry that had cleared the tent.

Something nudged at Harry’s memory about Ian. The flask.

“Damme,” he breathed. “Ian.”

“What about him?” Drake asked.

“When did you give the baron the flask?”

Drake thought a moment. “I don’t know. Last week.”

“And the attempt was made on Wellington’s life right after that,” Kate said, catching on right away.

Harry nodded and regretted it when his back set up a howling. “Exactly.”

“You can’t think Thirsk has anything to do with it,” Drake protested.

“I assume he’s some kind of government person?” Kate asked.

“I can’t officially admit to that,” Drake said.

“I can,” Harry said. “The government gets the verse we were told was needed to commence the attack on Wellington, and suddenly the attack has commenced.”

This silence wasn’t stark; it was sickened.

“No,” Drake insisted immediately. “Not possible.”

“What do you think, Harry?” Kate asked, leaning over him.

It did seem inconceivable. Thirsk was quiet, efficient, humorless, and thorough. Harry knew that the man was the government liaison to more than one shadow organization. During his time working for Scovill, Harry had reported to Thirsk on more than one occasion and found him cold, collected, analytical, and conservative. But a Lion? Harry just couldn’t see it.