Confessions of a Little Black Gown (8 page)

“Pretenses, Miss Langley?” he replied his brows arching regally over his brows. “Such as?”

She flinched at his apparent disapproval. “Yes, I fear I am not out here for a love of gardening or architecture, but…well…well…”

“Because your sister sent you?” he suggested.

Tally’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Oh, yes! Exactly. I am so glad you understand. I told Felicity that my presence out here, alone with a gentleman, could be misunderstood, but now I see that you haven’t misinterpreted my arrival as anything untoward.” She turned slightly and tossed that last bit over her shoulder in the most provocative manner she could muster.

“I would so hate to be thought of as
improper
,” she told him, letting the last word slide off her tongue with just the right hint.

“Not in the least, Miss Langley,” he replied quickly in the most vicarly and brotherly of tones, glancing at her and then just as quickly looking away. “No one would ever think you anything but a proper young
girl
.”

Tally froze. A what?
A proper young girl?
Clad in a black velvet dress that clung to her like a mermaid’s skin?

That confirmed it. He was a vicar and she was going mad, for no self-respecting, dishonorable, utterly unrepentant rake would call a lady wearing this gown “proper,” or worse, refer to her as a mere “girl”!

Gently she set Brutus down on the grass and turned to face Mr. Ryder.

And it didn’t hurt that she rolled her shoulders back a little and let her breasts rise up to the very top of her very improper bodice.

“My sister has consigned me to discover your likes and interests to better assist you in finding a bride.” Tally tried to look contrite, while at the same time coming closer with the same fluid movements Ja
milla had taught her all those years ago when their father had been assigned to Paris during the Peace in ’01. “I fear Her Grace is rather like…like…”

Oh, bother! How could one politely describe her wretched sister?

And then the unexpected happened.

“Brutus?” Mr. Ryder offered, with a bit of a dark glint to his already black gaze.

They both laughed, and their gazes caught.

To Tally it felt magical…and far too intimate, for his deep, rich laughter drew her to him like she’d never been pulled to any other man.

They stood there for several moments, mayhap two more than was proper, staring at each other, and each struggling with a silent battle.

Oh, goodness! What is happening? Was he actually coming closer to her?

She envisioned him as she’d seen him before, rakish and incautious, taking her in his arms and pulling her close. For wasn’t a night like this, a situation such as this, the perfect setting for seduction?

At the hem of her gown, Brutus ran in circles, trying to catch her attention, but before she could catch him and keep him from mischief, the little dog took off after some unseen foe—shooting like an arrow into the maze, disappearing into the shadowy confines of the clipped hedge, his sharp bark growing fainter and fainter as he ran deeper into the thorny hedges.

“Brutus!” she called after him, dashing along the edge of the maze. “Brutus, you wretched beast!” She started into the opening, but Mr. Ryder caught her by the arm.

“Miss Langley! What are you doing?”

“I must get Brutus,” she said, trying to pull free. But for a vicar, he had the hands of a coach driver, steady and strong.

“You’ll get lost in there,” he told her, holding her fast. “Just call to it again.”

She shook herself free, taking a steadying breath. Not so much in indignation over the fact that he’d stopped her, but over the way his touch had felt.

So strong. So warm. So dangerously tempting.

It was almost enough for her to consider using Jamilla’s “look”—the one that was supposed to drive men wild—on him again—not that it had worked at dinner, but she could hope…

No! No!
and again,
No!
her sensible side declared.
You are not going to do that. What the devil would you do if it
did
work?

She pressed her lips together and tried to focus on what it was Mr. Ryder was saying and not her fanciful desire for seduction.

Oh, bother, what was it? Just then a sharp
bark
from the maze steered her back on course. Oh, yes. Brutus.

“Miss Langley, if you would just call out—”

“Call him?” she asked. “Whatever for?”

“So he’ll come back.”

She shook her head. “Brutus never comes when you call to him. ’Tis too far beneath him.”

He gaped at her as if she was as addlepated as they came. “Then just wait for him to come out,” he ground out.

“Oh, that will never work. Brutus has a terrible sense of direction.” Tally reached out and put her
hand on Mr. Ryder’s sleeve. She shouldn’t, but she couldn’t resist. This man, this ungodly man, was so very tempting. “Will you help me?”

“Help you?” He gaped at her as if she’d said it in Russian. He took another glance at her. Perhaps she had.

“Yes. Help me rescue Brutus,” she insisted.

“I daresay your dog is perfectly safe.”

“Oh, no. He’s not a country dog. He may think this is just a park squirrel or a smallish rat. Why he could be chasing after a badger or something truly dangerous! And while he may be a formidable foe to a pair of boots, Brutus has not a bit of understanding that he’s not much bigger than my sewing basket.”

“This is foolishness…” he began to say, glancing first into the shadowed depths of the maze and then back at Tally.

So Tally did something she’d sworn a few moments ago she wouldn’t do again.

She cast the “look” up at Mr. Ryder, using every wile she possessed and the advantage of having a dress designed for distraction and other things…then looked right into his dark, unforgiving gaze and said, “Please, sir. Will you help me?”

G
ood God! Larken had eluded Napoleon’s best agents. Slipped in and out of Abbaye Prison in Paris to aid English agents who’d been captured. Tramped across the Pyrenees not once but three times, alone and unaided, to carry English intelligence out of France to Wellington, and eventually Pymm, at Whitehall.

And now he was being asked, in the name of King and Country, to rescue an addlepated Affenpinscher?

Why hadn’t Pymm just left him, pensioned off and forgotten as he was, so he could spend his nights doddering around his empty town house with only his nightmares to keep him company?

He reached out and caught hold of her, stopping her from following her dog into the maze. “Miss Langley, I don’t—”

His stern words fell away as the demmed chit tossed him a look, exactly like the one she’d dealt him at dinner. The sort of glance that sent his sensibilities scattering across the grass as if picked up by a sudden gale.

One flutter of those lashes, the come-hither flash of her blue eyes and the tilt of her lips was enough to drive him wild.

Lord! The promise behind such a glance. Did the minx have any idea what that look had him considering?

Taking her into his arms and kissing her. Letting his hands explore what he had been trying all night not to look at—her divine breasts, which her gown displayed without any propriety. He’d kiss her and tease her until she was panting and trembling with the same sharp, aching need her glance awakened in him.

Larken closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He’d been without female company for too long. That’s all this was. It wasn’t that he hadn’t had his share of mistresses and midnight adventures, but in his work for Pymm, he never lingered long enough to discover more than a passionate interlude.

And yet…this was no ambassador’s wife, no mistress of some German prince whose secrets could turn into his success.

Miss Langley was (at least to the world at large) an innocent, not one to be dallied with and deserted when the time came for him to leave.

Still, that didn’t stop his blood from running hot when she fluttered her demmed lashes at him…
And even though he held her fast, she still struggled against him, revealing a fiery spirit. He wasn’t wearing gloves and her dress ended with capped sleeves, so it was his bare hand on her soft skin, and he’d never felt such a fire from a woman.

As if her very heat invaded his blood, teased him to explore the rest of her.

Larken took a deep breath. What the hell was he thinking?

“Mr. Ryder, are you going to help me save Brutus?” she pleaded.

Help her
, indeed! Who was going to save
him
?

But even so, he dared another glance at Miss Langley, only to find her soft lashes fluttering once again, and he swore as she shifted her shoulders back a fraction more, he was going to find himself having the distinction of being the first gentleman in the
ton
ruined by a mere debutante.

Ah, yes. That would add nicely to his family’s already tattered honor. He could hear his defense now.

She followed me into the garden and I was overcome by her seductive glance…

He had to imagine such feeble excuses wouldn’t save him from some scandalous entanglement, the very least of which would entail meeting Hollindrake with pistols and seconds at sunrise.

Another round of frantic barking erupted inside the maze, and the next thing he knew, Miss Langley had taken flight, dashing out of his grasp and into the maze, heedless of the dark and the unlikelihood of her finding the little mutt amongst the twist and turns of the hawthorn hedge, for he had a view of it
from his fourth-floor room and its pattern was ingenuous but not forgettable.

Not for him.

“Miss Langley, come back here,” he snapped, yet his order was met only with the retreating sound of slippered feet moving farther and farther into the maze and not a word of acknowledgment from the lady.

Apparently she responded to orders as well as her monkey-faced dog.

“Demmit!” he muttered under his breath.

He glanced back at the part of the house he’d been surveying, where he should be at this very moment searching for Dashwell so he could report to Temple on the morrow that the task was completed. Then, if he rode hard enough, he could be back in London before the midnight supper was laid at Brook’s.

And yet…

Go after her
, the wind whispered.
She can help you.

Help me? Help me the last two paces I already stand from Bedlam
, he argued with himself.
The chit is a demmed handful. And Hollindrake’s problem. Not mine.

Unless…

What if Temple was right and she’d had a hand in freeing Dashwell? Larken shook his head. She was a chattering, witless example of all that was wrong with Mayfair misses. The theory that she could have masterminded Dashwell’s escape was madness…utter madness.

As unbelievable as how you find her completely and utterly breathtaking?

“I do not,” he muttered. But oh, that was a lie.

For one moment she might be as foolish as his
Aunt Edith’s pug, but the next—well, the next there was a sharpness about her that had him feeling like he was matching wits with Pymm.

The chit was an enigma.

A mesmerizing one.

He glanced into the darkened maze and felt a pull that tugged him toward something greater than any mission he’d ever set out on.

Even clearing his father’s name.

Hardly more important than that, he told himself. Nothing would deter him from that.
Nothing.

Except a pair of sparkling blue eyes full of mischief and passion.

Larken shook his head. Gads, this is what happens when one starts gadding about good Society and house parties. A fellow risks becoming as cork-brained as Templeton or that ridiculous friend of his, Stewie Hodges.

No, there was only one thing to do.

“Find Dashwell, get the hell out of here. Find Dashwell, get out of here,” he muttered to himself like a vow.

While he could return to the house and send the gardener after her, which is most likely what the duchess would expect Mr. Ryder to do, his host was another matter. Hollindrake’s expectations of him would be more exacting, for he knew exactly who Larken was.

And he’d expect Larken to do the honorable thing.

Larken’s jaw worked back and forth. If it was any other man than Hollindrake…for the duke was one of the few men in the
ton
who didn’t look askance at
him. Avoid his company. Then again, the duke had served in the field under Wellington and shared, Larken guessed, many of the experiences war left upon a man’s heart and memories.

They might not have ever spoken of it, but they didn’t have to. Each knew. And would expect nothing less than doing the right thing from the other. The honorable thing.

Shaking aside his annoyance as he stepped inside the maze, Larken set to work. For wasn’t lurking about and finding unsuspecting people what he did best, as he had in Madrid or Marseilles?

Yes, and this time he wasn’t even expected to kill anyone, though Miss Langley was certainly stretching his patience.

Taking a deep breath, he closed off the regular sounds of the evening, the hum of the insects, the whisper of a light summer wind, the lowing of a beast in a far meadow, and Brutus’s barking. Finally he settled in on the sound of Miss Langley’s determined tread, trying to discern exactly where she was, recalling the twists and turns he’d memorized from his bedchamber window earlier, while trying to avoid going down to dinner.

As he marched forth, he made his list. First, he’d find her (and to hell with her little dog) and drag her back inside. Then, he’d deposit her in the care of her sister and brother-in-law and make his excuses to escape them all. Finally, he’d find Dashwell, even if it took him all night.

Then, as if the Fates had ruled in his favor, he heard her gasp and tumble over.

“Bother!” came her exasperated sputter, and he couldn’t help himself: he grinned.

That was all he needed, for as he listened, he
saw her
, head over heels in the grass, and knew without a doubt which direction he needed to go—for she hadn’t stopped muttering her complaints.

He wound through the hedges, following the paths the best he could, listening for her complaints and threats—directed toward Brutus, thankfully—each one like a bread-crumb trail, until he thought he was very close. “Miss Langley?” he said as calmly as he assumed a vicar might.

“Mr. Ryder!” she huffed from the other side of the hedge, as she tiptoed along. “Do be quiet. I’m trying to find Brutus.”

“You would do well just to leave him out here overnight—”

“Overnight? Are you mad?”

Larken glanced up at the moon above and shook his head. “I wager by morning you’d find a contrite and well-behaved dog awaiting you.”

There was an aggrieved
harrumph
from the other side of the thorns, and still she continued along.
Stubborn chit.
“I do wish you would be still,” she whispered. “I think I know exactly where he is.”

Oh, yes, now she was the expert in these matters. Then again, he had a good reckoning where the mutt was as well—as would anyone within the Hollindrake parklands, given the little beast’s growling and yapping—Brutus was far deeper into the enormous maze than Larken wanted to venture. He had no intention of spending the night hunting for a
spoiled dog or the exit when he had more important matters to attend to…

Yet this time, when he closed his eyes and tried to recall the pattern of the maze, all he saw was her.

Miss Langley. In that dress of moonlight and shadows. With her blond hair curling down in reckless tangles from its pins, her arms outstretched, her lips parted.

There were no more secrets between them, just the two of them on this moonlit night, and no boundaries, no rules to keep them apart.

Come to me…
she’d whisper through the hedges.
Take me, my lord…if you can catch me.

“Oh, heavens, no!” she gasped.

Larken’s eyes sprang open. Though his blood pounded in his ears, the very real sound of Brutus growling as if he’d caught the largest rat in England wiped away the last vestiges of any thought of passion.

“Do you hear that? He’s in terrible trouble,” she said. “We must save poor Brutus!”

Poor Brutus, indeed!
When this assignment is over, Larken,
he promised himself,
you are going to take a long holiday in some quiet seaside resort. That or spend a week in London’s most expensive brothel and get every recollection of this assignment out of your memory…Every thought of
her.

He shuddered and contained the very rash and thorough curse that nearly sprang to his lips.

Vicars, as he recalled, were not prone to using profanity, or even the occasional obscenity.

No wonder they always looked so miserable.

“Oh, heavens, I do hope he hasn’t caught anything
too filthy. But at least I know exactly where he is,” came Miss Langley’s excited whisper. “Stay here while I go get him.”

This time he couldn’t stop himself. He cursed as he listened to her take flight yet again.

And Temple has the nerve to call
me
rash.

He chased after her, turning one corner, then another, until he was ahead of her. He wheeled sharply around the corner of a hedge, thinking he was enough ahead of her to cut her off.

Not so.

Miss Langley was closer than he thought and she ran straight into him, their collision complete.

In so many ways.

She barreled into his chest, and they fell together, her atop him, her hands grappling to catch hold of his lapels.

And onto the grass they tumbled, a tangle of limbs, one hand winding around her and pulling her closer, even as his other reached out to brace their fall. And while he shielded her from the worst of it, he found himself branded with every curve of her body, the fullness of her breasts, the feminine line of her hips, her long legs wound with his, her breath hot and indignant upon his neck.

It happened in the blink of an eye, but from that moment on, Larken knew he’d be marked by this troublesome bit of velvet, this woman who confounded him at every turn.

In the soft moonlight, he gazed up at her, struck to his very heart by the unlikely hold she cast over him.

Everything around them faded into the background. There was only them. It was a magical sort
of thing, one that left a practical man like Larken utterly confounded.

And when she looked back at him, her fingers still clinging to his jacket, her eyes widened with the same passion, he’d wager, that was enveloping him. Her lips opened to say something, but the words escaped her and instead, they parted only enough to form the sort of invitation that needed no explanation.