Behind the Marquess's Mask (The Lords of Whitehall Book 1) (10 page)

Kathryn could not have felt more awkward.

“Well, it does seem rather late, doesn’t it?” She affected a yawn behind her hand. The clock on the wall struck eight o’clock, as if on cue.

His attention drifted momentarily to the noisy thing. Then he nodded as if it were normal for anyone in London to be asleep at this time.

“Of course, you must be exhausted.” He dropped the cigarette into his snifter of port then rose from his chair. “Forgive me. I keep terribly late hours. I shall have you shown to your room.”

Nervousness pricked at her neck. “Perhaps I ought to return home. Mother should hear about our marriage, and I brought nothing with me.”

“Leave your mother to me. As for the other”—he made a quick sweep of her then quickly looked away to tug the bell pull hanging near his desk—“I sent my housekeeper off to Bond Street today. You will find everything in your size and taste.”

“You had clothes purchased for me?” Then it was true; he’d had this planned the entire time. He had known her mother would give in and allow her to leave with him, and he had known she would agree to go inside his home. He had known he would marry her tonight.

He turned back to her with an inscrutable expression. “Of course I had clothes purchased for you. You have to wear clothes, Kathryn.”

Her brow arched indignantly. “I intend to.”

He nodded as he rubbed his neck, obviously unconvinced.

Kathryn felt her ire rise and was about to give him a proper set down when the door to the study opened, admitting a servant.

“Show Lady Ainsley to her apartments,” Ainsley directed absently, moving back behind his desk.

The man frowned, looking more like a bird of prey than a footman as he searched the room from where he stood, trying not to appear to be searching, presumably for the dowager.

Ainsley motioned to Kathryn impatiently. “My wife,” he enunciated.

The footman’s eyes widened for only a moment before he bowed, turning to Kathryn. “If you would follow me, my lady?” he asked, indicating toward the door.

She did not hesitate. Ainsley was likely to turn to her in the same impatient fashion if she had.

Kathryn was led through the large hall and up the staircase. The servants did an admirable job of lighting the passages. She could easily see the top of the first flight of stairs had a large, arched window at least twenty feet tall. The paintings hanging along the stairs were five feet tall, and those hanging in the hall as she approached her apartments were nearer to eight.

As the footman stopped to open the door to her apartments, she noticed a familiar face only a few feet farther down the hall. With determined curiosity, she stepped past to study the painting more closely.

Depicted was a much younger version of Ainsley in a blue captain’s jacket with a crimson collar and gold epaulettes. He looked no older than twenty, and he was smiling, not so much with his mouth, but with his eyes. There was a small upward curl to one side of his lips. He seemed youthfully cocksure and idealistic. His black hair curled forward over neatly trimmed sideburns, and one dark brow was slightly raised, giving him a challenging air.

There was little to nothing of him left in the man downstairs. That man was all masculine edges, tinged with cynicism. A perfect depiction of male virility masterfully chiseled in a block of ice.

“My lady?”

With a final heavyhearted glance, she turned and preceded the footman into a drawing room with a connecting bedchamber and wardrobe.

The rooms were lavishly decorated with printed furnishings, light blue wall panels lined with white molding, intricately carved white ceilings, and large white pediments stacked above arched windows overlooking Berkeley Square.

Kathryn studied her rooms appreciatively. She hadn’t expected such a lovely arrangement after seeing the dark masculinity of his study. It was obvious he hadn’t been the one to decorate these rooms. Based on the style, she would say it had been his mother or grandmother.

The drawing room was complete with a settee and chair, tea table, side table, bookcase, and writing table. A quick scan of the books left her very pleased with the selection. They were mostly novels with a few biographies and some poetry. Eagerly, she grabbed one of the novels and padded back into the bedroom, setting the tome beside the bed.

A maid entered shortly after, helping Kathryn into a nightgown and combing her hair. The gown was uncomfortably sheer. She might as well have not worn anything at all. Additionally, the neckline was low enough to just barely cover her breasts. Apparently, her modiste had figured the same as the rest of England and fitted her out as she had any other courtesan. No doubt, Kathryn’s name would once again make it into the morning
Herald
. She hoped the filmy negligee would not.

She had no idea what to expect tonight, but she doubted it included romance, which she told herself was fine with her. Ainsley was a beast. A beautiful, irritating beast.

After an hour of reading, her eyes felt heavy and her shoulders ached, but her mind still worked, keeping her awake despite the desperate urging of her body. She stretched her neck as she set down the book.

She was nearly positive a marriage devoid of romance would be fine with her. No marriage at all would have been grand.

She thought things couldn’t get much worse than waking up from the brink of death with no memory then being molested in a garden and saved by a rake. It seemed she had been mistaken. Things could be infinitely worse. Life married to Ainsley was not looking especially felicitous at the moment, and it did not look to be improving any time soon or ever.

* * *

“
B
loody hell
.”

As soon as he was left alone, Grey pitched his snifter into the fireplace with much more force than necessary. Then he turned to the sideboard and poured himself another glass, this time with scotch. In nearly an hour, he drained the decanter dry, 200 pounds’ worth of the finest scotch in England, whilst another cigarette lay unlit on his desk.

Married less than an hour and he was already conjuring images of her strolling about the corridors naked. Like an idiot, he was truly concerned she might just do that. Then he was disappointed she wouldn’t.

Doomed, that was what he was.

He had known—somehow he had—that a wedding band would be strangling his finger before his commission was through. He had told them all, but had they listened to the expert? Of course not. It was almost as though they had known he would not leave Kathryn ruined. He never could have, though he had truly thought this time would be different. This time, he had believed he would be able to say no and let her face the consequences of her actions. What an idiot he had turned out to be. Now he was legally strapped to his damned mission, fighting tooth and nail to keep a cool head because the minute he gave into his prick, he would be as good as dead. And so would Kathryn.

She would be spitting mad when she realized to whom she had wed.

She wouldn’t be the only one, though. He was angry as all hell with himself and would be for some time. And with Matthews and Saint Brides. Not that he didn’t harbor a fair amount of irritation for Kathryn, as well. She was the one who had started this whole fiasco. Now look at them—bound together in wedded, fly-bitten bliss.

He pushed back from the desk with a clenched jaw and stony expression. His legs weren’t working well with his brain, and his gait faltered slightly as he stepped out of his study and toward the grand stairs, but he kept walking without pause.

He knew he should have stopped drinking sooner. His vision was a little delayed, but he still felt he could manage the stairs. Once he started up the first few steps, he felt his head weave back and forth, so he steadied himself with a firm grasp on the banister.

He raised his eyes to the top of the stairs, his dark brows snapping together as he ran his fingers through his hair. The new mistress of Ainsley Place was a menace to the delicate balance of order and misery that was his life. He was content staring into the faces of men dead set on ripping him to pieces. He was happy to be sent to no man’s land to retrieve papers and make witnesses disappear. He didn’t even mind the unfair odds stacked against him most of the time.

What he was not happy or content with was having a rebellious cactus plastered to his hip to protect whilst simultaneously tracking down a deranged would-be woman killer. What he did mind was attempting to do all of this whilst ignoring how infernally female she was, and how very male his cock continually reminded him he was.

He slowly started back up the steps. When he had managed to scale the length of them, he staggered down the hall without stopping until he was at her apartments.

He stood with his face an inch from her door, working through a silent monologue. There were certain things he ought to set straight before she concocted any romantic ideals about their relationship. She was legally under his protection and authority. However, he was more her guardian than husband.

The thought did not thrill him in the slightest. Perhaps Grenville had known precisely what he was doing when he had made that damning request.
Protect Kathryn,
he had said.
Take her off my hands
would have been more honest. Grenville knew better than anyone how Kathryn would act and what Grey would do about it.

He shook his head and rapped on the door before turning the knob and letting himself in. The door opened easily. If she knew who he was, she would have locked it.

He did his best not to fall over his own feet as he passed through the dark sitting room and into the bedroom.

All was silent and the candles extinguished, save for the remains of the once roaring fire. She was already asleep. Hell, how long had he been drinking?

His eyes swept the area, methodically searching for moving shadows, his ears pricked for the smallest sound. The subtle action was more a force of habit than a precaution. This was the last place he expected to find any unwanted guests.

All seemed secure except the drapes had not been drawn.

The corners of his mouth turned up appreciatively in unabashed, drunken lust. The moonlight flooding in lit up her figure outlined under the bedclothes of the large four-poster. Her soft skin glowed against the white sheets, and her night rail twisted about her until it met the blanket at her waist.

He could see her round breasts and their dusky peaks through the thin fabric. His mouth tingled with the desire to take each one into his mouth, to lave and lick until they pebbled under his tongue, and she begged him for more. For sweet release.

He bit said tongue.

He brushed the backs of his fingers across her soft cheek. “What have you done, Kate?” he whispered, tracing her jaw with his thumb then allowing the rough pad to brush her bottom lip. “Why would anyone try to kill you?”

He knew why someone might
want
to kill Kathryn. He had himself once or twice. But who would actually follow through, doggedly stalking her and beating her senseless in an alley, and
still
be so enraged as to want to finish the job?

Her mouth opened and closed, brushing Grey’s thumb with the moist inside of her bottom lip before she pressed a sleepy kiss against it.

He watched her mouth, helplessly tormented until he regained sufficient brain function to jerk his hand away. He ground his teeth as he turned to pull the drapes closed.

He was a bloody idiot for coming in here. She was soft and warm, and it had been painfully long since he’d had a beautiful woman under him. Not since the night she had been attacked. Before, actually, because that rendezvous had been cut laughably short. He hadn’t even had his coat off before Kathryn had darted off down the hall, and he had gone after her.

Now there she was, practically naked with her auburn curls spread across the pillow and her willowy arms bent up at her sides. And her skin… Merciful heaven, she was a veritable goddess. Every muscle in his liquor-soaked body screamed to sink into her, namely one bloody damn insistent one.

His cock throbbed in his trousers.

He entered his own rooms by use of the connecting door. Then he pulled off his clothes in clumsy, jerking movements as he staggered toward his bed, ignoring the suicidal impulse to share his wife’s warmth and the increasingly hardening rod springing to attention as soon as his pants dropped.

Malaria.
Grey snorted. If he lived through this, he wasn’t writing one word of the report for this confounded mess. Saint Brides’s hand would bloody well fall off before the boy-genius could write his way out of this one.

K
athryn picked
out a dress that had been sent the day before just as Grey had said and, with the maid’s help, settled into the perfect fit. The light blue, lacy contraption complemented her eyes. Once her hair was brushed and put in its place, she examined herself in the full-length mirror.

Not long ago, she had seen a gaunt and weak girl gawking back at her. Now she looked completely recovered. One would never guess her mind was still as ill as ever. The question was how long it would take Ainsley to figure it out.

“My dear girl, what do you mean by going off like this?”

Kathryn spun around to find her mother standing in the doorway.

“M-mother, you are here,” she stammered, and then her brow knit. “Why are you here?”

A finely arched brow lifted imperially. “Pardon me, Your Highness. Do I now need an appointment to gain audience with Your Majesty?”

“No,” Kathryn said, shaking her head. “Why are you
here
? Were you not shown to the drawing room?”

Though Ainsley might have had unconventional social visits with some regularity, she wouldn’t have expected his servants to make such an egregious indecorum with a respectable caller.

“I hardly need some stiff-necked butler telling me I can’t see my own daughter in her own
room.” Her mother’s voice was rife with disappointment as she stood in the doorway, her hands perched on her hips.

“You could have at least sent word,” the matron continued, unmoved by her daughter’s pained expression, whilst an embarrassed-looking maid brought in a tea tray. “The nerve of that man, stealing you off like a thief in the night. It wasn’t enough that he marry in scandal, he had to do something even more outrageous to stay true to his dishonorable character! I should have known!”

“Would you have agreed to a private wedding by special license?” Kathryn asked.

“Of course not!”

Kathryn smiled humorlessly. “He must have anticipated your answer. Perhaps you would prefer for him to have waited for me to become a pariah,” Kathryn said. “For that matter, he could have easily left me destitute and continued on his way, unattached.”

“That isn’t what I meant. I am simply upset with his tactics.” Lady Grenville’s expression softened as she closed the gap between them with a deep sigh. “Dearest girl, all that really matters is whether you are happy. Are you, my dear?”

Kathryn forced a smile. “Much happier than I would have been had he dueled Papa.”

Lady Grenville grunted thoughtfully. “Your father never would have challenged him. Of all people, I figured Greydon would have known that. Anyway, I received a note this morning asking me to help you select a wardrobe. I have been given strict instructions to send all bills, exorbitant or no, straight to him.”

“How kind,” Kathryn mused.
And unnecessary.
Her current wardrobe was fine enough.

“He’s trying to placate me,” Lady Grenville said flatly, “and it’s working, but I hope he does not expect this to settle the account every time. Even in London, money cannot absolve all one’s sins.”

After a couple cups of fortifying English tea and a good deal of planning, they decided on where to begin their purchases. Bond Street offered an array of gowns, reticules, parasols, fripperies, and ribbons in abundance. They chose only the finest fabrics available, and Kathryn noticed Lady Grenville had perhaps a bit too much pleasure in spending Ainsley’s coin.

* * *

G
rey woke
in much the same ill humor as he had for the last decade. His head throbbed as though fists beat against his temples, and some foul thing seemed to have sucked all the moisture from his mouth. Not to mention, he had spent all night dreaming about his wife and all the deliciously wicked things he ought not to want to do to her, which meant he woke up painfully reminded he had not done any of those things.

Regardless, within half an hour, he was shaved, bathed, dressed, and striding out the door. He had a busy day ahead. Once the meeting with his solicitor was done, he had to track down Nick, who could be anywhere. Considering last night was Grey’s wedding, more or less, and Nick was a romantic, he would be out celebrating somewhere.

It didn’t take Grey longer than an hour to find someone who had seen Pembridge. It took him half that time to find twenty someones to pump his arm, forcing their congratulations upon him.

Nick had been spreading the word, it seemed.

Grey forced himself out of his carriage and onto the cobblestone street, finding himself at White’s for the first time in almost two years. If it were up to him, he could easily make it another several, but this was where Nick had been for the past sixteen hours, ever since he had stood as Grey’s best man the night before. Saint Brides might have even stopped by, if only to drink away the shock and disappointment of being witness and accomplice to the shackling of Grey to a respectable lady.

Although Grey had no doubt Nick’s congratulations were sincerely heartfelt, he was sure Saint Brides was a volcano, tactfully waiting until all innocents were at a safe distance before erupting.

The man was a model gentleman, after all.

He stepped inside the all too familiar building with its white stone street front and warm, smoky morning rooms. The fireplaces were lit with comfortable chairs angled toward the warm flames. Small tables, which were placed between the chairs, normally sported anything from newspapers and a pastry or brandy to a full dinner. Though the card room and the coffee room were a floor above him—both more likely for one to find a deck of cards—the table in the middle of the morning room was beginning to pile a king’s ransom amidst a group of dandies. They were loudly enjoying a string of games no doubt started the night before, though time was now ticking well into the morning. Besides them, the room was empty.

Nick was lounging, coatless and hatless, his golden hair gleaming from the firelight as he glanced down with good-humored confidence at the cards in his hand. With him were a few of Grey’s old cronies: Dane Fowlerton, Archie Prichard, and the Earl of Chesham. All were gentlemen and officers from the war and all still able to laugh and game with the best of them, it appeared.

Fowlerton was talking animatedly whilst the other three listened to his sordid tale.

“I realized as soon as we walked into the room and she stripped,” Fowlerton was saying. “It was the same damned girl who spilt that hot coffee on my manhood not three weeks before.” He raised an indignant brow. “She said she slipped and then laughed her way back to the kitchen. I got curious looks and giggles from those chits for days.”

“It could have been another girl, Fowlerton. You were in a rage, and three weeks had passed,” Chesham pointed out mildly. “You are lucky to remember the face you bedded two nights ago.”

“She had the same blasted birthmark on her left breast,” Fowlerton insisted, pointing to the corresponding spot on his own chest. “A heart, of all things.”

The men sent amused glances at each other at Fowlerton’s irritation.

“As you can imagine, the whore sprung up, shrieking like the devil, and turned to me, screaming, ‘You blue-blooded bastard! That was my bum!’” Fowlerton continued, “So I said, ‘I am sorry, love. I slipped.’”

Fowlerton and Pritchard howled whilst Chesham and Nick gave in to crooked grins.

“Not very gallant of you,” Pembridge said as he discarded one card and picked up another from a pile.

“
Gallant?
” Fowlerton managed. “She nearly unmanned me! I bet the sow thought she had, too.”

“I suppose Pembridge here would have assaulted her conscience by leaving her with the best fuck she had ever had,” Pritchard said, tossing one of his cards down, as well.

“Then offer her his best sherry,” said Chesham, smiling as he laid down the winning hand.

“By gad!” Pritchard tossed his cards down. “If I keep at the tables with you, I won’t have a sixpence to scratch with.”

“What you mean,” Chesham said as he pocketed his winnings, “is you will go over budget and be forced to dip into your mining profits.”

“Those profits are set aside for a very specific purpose.” Pritchard slouched and tossed back the remains of his brandy.

“Is she tall and blonde with the figure of a goddess, by chance?” Nick asked, a knowing smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“That is entirely none of your business,” Pritchard muttered sullenly.

Fowlerton and Chesham chuckled.

At that time, Fowlerton spotted Grey. “Ainsley!” He scooted aside to make room as Grey approached. “Bring another chair over here, Pritch.”

“Oh, no.” Grey shook his head. “I shall only be here a moment. I need a word with Pembridge.”

Fowlerton stood and nearly pushed Grey into the chair Pritchard had pulled over. “You cannot just show up at your own wedding after-party and not have a drink with your old friends, Ainsley! You will hurt our feelings.”

“Indeed, you would!” Pritchard agreed with a slur, no doubt eager to shift the attention away from his Amazonian money pit.

“We are obviously a sensitive lot.” Chesham sent Grey a pitying smile and handed him a brandy. “Congratulations, Ainsley.”

“Now, I shall not ask why you decided against inviting all your friends to this private shackling,” Fowlerton began. “But hell if you aren’t spending the next several hours in, beside, or under that chair, drinking us under the table like the old days. Then you are telling us all about your bride.”

“I haven’t the time,” Grey said, thankful he didn’t have to fabricate an excuse. Fowlerton had been an interrogator during the war and was even better at spotting lies than Grey was. “I am off to the country tonight, and I have countless preparations, which is why I am here.”

Fowlerton slouched against the back of his chair, obviously deflated. “Hell and damnation! We haven’t seen you in years. When we do, it’s the day after your wedding, and we find you are off to the country.” He glanced around the table then sighed resignedly. “Hell, country wenches aren’t all clumsy sows, are they?”

“Oh, no!” Grey scooted back in his chair. “I am on my honeymoon. The last thing I need is a bunch of skirt-chasing dandies sniffing around my new bride.”

“We wouldn’t dare sniff your bride, Ainsley.” Pritchard frowned indignantly as he leaned his chair back on two legs. “Not until she asks nicely,” he added, breaking out into a shameless grin.

Apparently, the drink had finally caught up with him.

Fowlerton scowled and shifted in his chair. Seconds later, Pritchard’s chair toppled, or it was pulled from underneath him, rather. The handsome dandy was sent backward, his booted feet flying up in the air as he hit the floor with a grunt. As soon as he could breathe again, he let out a whoop of laughter, unable or unwilling to right himself.

“Bacon-brain,” Fowlerton mumbled.

Chesham spoke next, ignoring Pritchard’s ebbing chortles from the floorboards. “Perhaps when you return to town, we could catch up on our celebrating.”

“Perhaps.” Grey managed a smile, finding it strangely tempting to put an end to Pritchard’s blissful idiocy with a row. However, Pritchard had always been a bit of a nitwit when it came to drinking and women, and Grey was never so touchy before.

He turned to Nick. “I need use of your cottage in Devon. Mine is too… ah… crowded.”

“It’s yours,” Nick answered simply. “There are only a man and wife running it now, but I can send a few servants for you.”

“I shall send my own. Thank you, Pembridge,” Grey said.

“No need to thank me. Consider its use a wedding present.” Nick smiled. “The quaint cottage will do you far more good than me at the moment.”

“A cottage!” Pritchard managed to shriek laughingly from the floor. “How cozy!”

“Put a cork in it, Pritch!” Fowlerton said, a muscle in his jaw visibly ticking when the dandy’s laughs re-erupted.

Talk moved on to country hunting then on to hunters then on to Tattersalls. After half an hour, Pritchard was still under the table and blessedly quiet. Grey accepted another round of congratulations, one more snifter of brandy and, after realizing the loud snoring was coming from the finely tailored lump under the table, one hand of cards before leaving the club.

This had been his last stop; he could spare the time it had taken to satisfy his old friends. Though Pritchard wouldn’t remember a moment of it and probably wouldn’t believe it when Fowlerton claimed it happened, either.

Grey’s solicitor already had his instructions and knew how to contact Grey should anything out of the ordinary arise or need his immediate attention. Additionally, the new Lady Ainsley was distracted with silk, muslin, hats, and parasols.

Even with the delay at White’s, he did not expect Kathryn to be finished shopping soon. In his head, he had imagined her and her mother sitting in a barouche, tossing his money into the streets by the handfuls.

Ridiculous
, Grey thought as he stalked in through the vestibule then the hall. He was about to go on into his study for a mid-afternoon decanter before packing when a melodic chuckle from the drawing room caught his attention. He turned and stopped in the doorway with his eyes immediately fastening on Kathryn.