Always a Temptress (4 page)

“I could do it,” he whispered, his mouth next to her ear. “All I’d have to do is kiss you, right here behind your ear. You’d let me do anything, then. Wouldn’t you, Kate?”

Reaching out, he pulled a pin from her hair, loosing a thick curl. Kate shivered, frozen with memory. Suddenly she was fifteen again, balanced on the edge of womanhood. Trembling with possibility, with wonder, with hunger. For the first time in a decade, she remembered what it had felt like to anticipate, and it shredded her control.

“Or would you like to offer a bit of incentive
not
to look?” he murmured into her ear. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult. From what I hear, it’s your favorite thing to do.”

And then, Harry made his mistake. He took that last step as if he had the right, as if she would never think to defend herself. 

He wrapped one hand around her throat. Not squeezing, just controlling. It was too much. She felt the familiar wings of terror beating against her ribs. She had nowhere to run.

She did the only thing she could. She rammed her knee straight up into his bollocks.

H
arry made it down three flights of stairs before finally giving in to the agony in his body. Taking a moment to make sure he was alone, he leaned back against the wall and bent over, eyes closed, hands on knees, and let out a long, low groan.

He shouldn’t have let his anger get the better of him. He’d had no business picking Kate up. If he’d been more rested, he wouldn’t have made that mistake. He would have let Frank deal with her and kept his distance, which had been his intention all along. It would have saved him from not just the fresh pains in his chest, but the hot ache in his balls.

He should never have agreed to this. He should have kept to his original plan and gone home after the wedding. He’d promised himself, lying on that shattered Belgian field among the screaming horses and groaning men, that he was finished with world events. No more Rifles or army or extra little missions he’d found himself taking on during the last ten years. The future would hold nothing for him but the clean, strong lines of construction, the peaceful dust of history, the immutable laws of mathematics.

And yet here he was again. And it was all Kate’s fault.

Even so, he owed her an apology for what had just happened. He had never treated a woman so badly. He’d meant to crowd her a bit, push her into an indiscretion. Instead, the minute he’d stepped close, all of his hard-won discipline had disintegrated. Just the scent of her had damn near destroyed him.

It was her perfume, an oddly discordant scent of jasmine and vanilla, and the clean, fresh-air scent of her hair. His body remembered as if he’d held her last only a week ago, as if the betrayals and lies, the years of separation, had never happened. His body didn’t give a damn about betrayal. It wanted her just as badly as it always had. It wanted her flat on her back, legs spread, eyes soft with desire, just for him. A duke’s daughter offering herself to plain Mr. Harry Lidge.

He wasn’t plain Harry Lidge anymore. He was Major Sir Henry Lidge, knighted for conspicuous bravery, friend of Wellington and Rothschild and Nash. The squire’s son who had dared to fall in love with a duke’s daughter had come far in the world. But she was still a duke’s daughter. And he’d lost his taste for dukes’ daughters ten years ago.

Except that it seemed he hadn’t. Even throbbing like hell, his balls clenched with the thought of having her in his arms again. Even disillusioned and furious with her, he couldn’t get the memory of her out of his mind: the old echoes of her surprised sighs when he’d touched her; the velvet-soft span of her skin as they’d nestled close, hip-to-hip, belly-to-belly; her plump, luscious breasts flattened against his chest.

And her eyes. Grass green, with little flecks of yellow that lit like chandeliers when she was excited, that softened to velvet when she comforted or kissed. Those eyes had once been the most beautiful thing about her, as changeable and vibrant as a moor beneath passing clouds. He had fed on those eyes, deliberately inciting mischief and outrage and glee just to see the emotions flare. He had seen the sun in those eyes.

Now, though, her eyes were sharp as shattered glass; brittle, knowing, sly. A much better reflection of the soul within. His memories had been a lie.

Could he truly mourn what he’d thought he’d seen in her eyes? He could. He did. Because that summer they’d shared, he’d thought her eyes reflected everything that was good and bright and possible in the world. That summer he’d still believed in all those things. He’d believed in her.

He’d been such an innocent.

Well, Kate had taken care of that. Kate and the battlefields of Europe. The only thing Harry believed in now was the beauty of a well-laid foundation. The sweep of a simple staircase, the comfort of a well-placed window and a sturdy roof. The elegant geometry of architecture.

He gave a sour smile. Well. He obviously believed in lust. Hadn’t he just had an unmistakable example of it? And he hadn’t been the only one. He would swear Kate had been just as aroused as he. He’d felt it; her body bowing toward his, metal to irresistible magnet. No matter what had happened before, what would happen next, in that moment she had wanted him just as much as he wanted her. That, at least, hadn’t changed.

Fat lot of good it did him.

Sighing, he straightened. He needed to be more careful than ever now. More disciplined. He didn’t want to be the one to let the Lions slip through his fingers.

He was just so tired. And Kate was still Kate. It was going to be a long few days.

“Wouldn’t you like a bit of a lie-down, Major?” he heard nearby.

He looked up in surprise to find his batman standing not four feet away in the doorway to the library, a lit candle in his hand. “Thank you, no, Mudge. I’m afraid there isn’t the time right now.”

“I’ll watch down here for you, sir,” the boy insisted.

Once, on the Continent, Harry had seen a painting of angels by Botticelli. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear that one now stood before him: young, lithe, beautiful, with curly brown hair and big, liquid brown eyes that looked as innocent as a child’s. Definitely too beautiful to have been thrown into a troop of riflemen without protection.

Straightening as best he could, Harry walked into the room his staff had dubbed HQ. “We have a lot to do, Mudge. Let’s get on with it.”

“Please, sir,” Mudge said, following. “Tell me we’re not supposed to stay here.”

Mudge had obviously already been in the room. The shutters were thrown open to allow weak moonlight to wash through. Sadly, it did nothing to dispel the squalor.

“Sorry, Mudge,” Harry told the inexplicably named angel as he unbuckled the saddlebags that sat on the misused oak desk. “This is our bivouac for a bit. Mr. Hilliard assured me that it’s been out of use so long, no one would think to look for us here.”

Mudge cast his huge eyes around the room as if he were a Christian martyr assessing the Colosseum. “I’m sure that’s all well and good, sir…”

Harry really couldn’t blame the boy. The library was just as grim as the rest of the house. What had once been an oak-paneled room, embellished with coffered ceilings and ogived windows, had been reduced to a bookless, water-stained wreck, paint-peeling, musty, and dark. Harry still couldn’t believe that Diccan’s uncle had lived here until four years ago. It must have taken decades to reduce this place to such sorry shape.

He’d only glimpsed the outside briefly, and it had been no more promising: a collection of mismatched wings badly grafted onto a medieval abbey. Honey-colored Cotswold stone clashed with red brick and, inexplicably, gray flint, all cobbled together like a beggar’s coat. Even so, it had good bones. Harry hated that it had been left to rot.

Perhaps if he had some spare time in the morning, he’d take his sketchbook and do a tour of the place, just for himself. It might never be beautiful, but with a little help, Harry thought it could at least be reclaimed. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have something other than his prisoner to focus on.

He thought of the termagant up in that bedroom and sighed. He had a feeling he was going to be spending all his time trying to outwit one small duchess.

“Sir?”

Harry started back to attention, Mudge’s worried countenance beginning to annoy him. “How many of the bedrooms are dry?” he asked. Relieving Mudge of his candle, he made his way to the fireplace.

Mudge sighed. “One.”

Which had been given to Kate. “Well then, pull some bedrolls into any dry room on the ground floor. Any luck with stores or staff?”

“No, sir.” Mudge’s voice was mournful. “Nothin’ in the pantry but mice and dust. Phillips is out trying to make a dent in the stables.”

Harry knelt and pushed his candle into the black maw that yawned beneath the grimy marble mantel. “We’ve bedded down in worse places.” Although even in those, the fireplaces had drawn. As opposed to this one. The candle flickered and died.

“There was a war on,” the boy retorted. “Sir.”

He couldn’t suppress a wry grin. “I don’t suppose you know any chimney sweeps.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Mudge trudged for the door, ostensibly on the way to look.

Setting his candle down on the desk, Harry took out his handkerchief and wiped off his hands before claiming one of the few undamaged chairs. “Schroeder has money,” he reminded the boy. “See where the town is and re-victual. If asked, you can tell them we’re thinking of buying the place for a hunting lodge. ”

Mudge was already out of sight. “Yes, sir,” floated from the darkness.

“Schroeder is here,” a woman’s voice answered in the clipped consonants of Germany.

Harry looked up to see a buxom blonde stride into his new office.

Hands clasped at her waist in imitation of the best chatelaine, the drably attired beauty smiled. “I have to admit I liked my last position better.”

Harry looked up from relighting his candle. “You’ll be abigail for a duchess.”

“Considering who the duchess is, I think I’d rather be scrubbing pots in Chelsea.”

“You’ve finished going through her baggage?”

Taking out her own handkerchief to wipe off the rickety chair that sat across from Harry’s desk, she settled onto it as if she were in a salon. “Nothing…well, unless you count a store of scandalous attire, enough feathers to stuff a mattress, and several very technical treatises on the propagation of tulip bulbs…I don’t suppose the evil plot she’s involved in is to take over the tulip market. If that were so, then we’d have our man…woman. Duchess.”

“Tulips?” Harry asked, as if it would help bring sense to the subject.

Barbara just shrugged. “There was also this,” she said, tossing a pristine white handkerchief onto the desk. “You’ll notice it is embroidered with Napoleon’s symbol.”

For a moment, his heart raced. Then he picked up the handkerchief and saw Barbara’s mistake. “Golden bees,” he said and pointed. “These are black and yellow.”

Schroeder shrugged. “So the duchess said. Evidently her companion is fond of embroidering the insect on every piece of lingerie and linen in their store. The companion’s name is Lady Bea Seaton, the duchess’s sister-by-marriage, if you can believe it.”

“We need to search her person,” Harry said, momentarily distracted by the soft slide of lawn through his fingers.

Schroeder quirked an eyebrow. “Is this a privilege you reserve for the senior officer?”

He dropped the handkerchief. “Didn’t Diccan tell me you were well mannered and obedient?”

She laughed, a pleasant, throaty sound. “He must have been thinking of his horse…No, come to think of it. Gadzooks is the worst-tempered horse in Britain.” When he didn’t answer, she sighed. “Are you sure you want to invade a duchess’s privacy?”

“We don’t have a choice. You’re the one who works for Diccan. Do you think he would have accused his cousin of treason if he hadn’t been sure?”

“What I heard was that it was the Surgeon who made the accusation, and that Diccan was afraid
for
her. Not of her. Sounds a bit less…damning to me.”

Harry looked over at the open window. “Trust me, she’s capable of anything.”

“I take it you know each other.”

“We did.”

“Not a pleasant experience?”

He sighed. “It was until I discovered that she was amoral, selfish, and manipulative. You’ll save a lot of time and energy if you begin there. Now, please. Get her to change and watch her while she does.”

“Would you like me to also question her? Sometimes it comes easier from another woman.”

“I would like you to find that verse. Nothing else.”

With a long-suffering sigh that sounded a bit like Mudge’s, she pushed herself to her feet. “I don’t feel good about this.”

Harry flashed her a tired smile. “If this were going to be easy, I wouldn’t have asked for you.”

For the first time in her life, Kate wished for complete darkness. Maybe without sight she could have avoided the truth. But she had the candle. She had enough light to discern every shape and shadow in the room. She held on to enough sanity to recognize them all.

The house was called Warren Hall. A decaying monstrosity that blighted the countryside near Marlborough, it had been the home of one Philbert Ambrosius Hilliard Warren until his too-timely death four years ago. Kate sat in a straight-backed chair in the middle of the master bedroom, a grim, echoing chamber presided over by an even grimmer painting of Philbert himself, a skeletal old man in a badly fitting bagwig. She knew this because after the old man’s death, she had taken a tour of the place with the person Philbert had willed it to. Her cousin Diccan.

Harry hadn’t lied. Diccan knew where she was. He really had put her in Harry’s hands.

No one was coming to save her from the dark. No one was coming to save her from Harry. She had nothing to protect her but an uncertain candle. So she pulled the battered old table up to her and reseated the candle in its dingy chipped plate. And then she watched as the flame slowly failed.

In the corner of her brain that still worked, Kate realized that no more than two hours passed before she heard the key in the door. In the rest of it, though, it seemed to be forever, counted in the flickers of the disappearing candle.

When new light spilled into the room, she came perilously close to sobbing out loud.

“Your Grace.” A woman stood in the doorway. “I have come to help you change.”

Kate took a slow breath before turning to greet her visitor. It wouldn’t do to seem desperate. She recognized the newcomer, a tall, shapely woman with blue eyes and pale blond hair that glowed oddly in the light that silhouetted her. She had impressive posture and hands she kept clasped at her waist, like the perfect servant.

“Schroeder, isn’t it?” Kate asked, smiling. Beside her, her candle shuddered with the advent of fresh air. She afforded it a quick glance to make sure it stayed healthy before briefly turning back to her visitor. “You work for my cousin Diccan. As a spy.”

Kate heard the rustle of material as Schroeder curtsied. “I aid him in his investigations,” the woman allowed. “I am also an excellent abigail. Sir Harry asked me to do for you while you are his guest.”