For the Earl's Pleasure (9 page)

A jolt went through her, but from his words or his actions as he slid her finger against his soft, full lips, she didn’t know.

“What? Where?” she managed to utter.

“You taste like strawberries.” His voice went strange, and his eyes grew more intense. Her captured finger brushed his bottom lip.

“What?” she asked in a strangled voice. “I haven’t had a single strawberry.”

“Strange, isn’t it? My favorite fruit.”

“I—I think you might have been damaged while disappearing.”

He raised a brow, his eyes clearing, and stepped back. “No. The only damage that is being done is to my body.” His gaze sharpened. “I must find where I’m being held and return so I can escape. There is a strange tug and a dreamy cast to things, but I can feel it.”

She bit her lip, not entirely believing in this new Rainewood who seemed much more
attentive
. “Where then?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there long enough. They are keeping me drugged.”

Spirits were wild storytellers. Sometimes she thought the most eccentric of the bards deliberately left an imprint of themselves as a last huzzah of entertainment for the world.

“But now you are here,” he said. One hand curled into the hair at her nape. “Or I am once more with you. And you can help me. I can feel that too.” He slowly pulled her closer. “The fair Abigail Smart with skin like satin and lips like roses.”

She felt drugged herself as he continued the slow pull.
Wrong, wrong! Right, right!
her mind screamed.

She pushed away from him, the conflicting feelings converging into certainty. She quickly stepped back until she bumped into the wall.

“You aren’t Valerian Danforth, Lord Rainewood. Who are you?”

A
deep chuckle emerged and he was in front of her in a flash, fingers again seeking the hair at her nape. “I assure you I am.”

“He would never say such things to me. You are some sort of strange imprint of his on the world come to torment me.”

It was a frustrating admission. One that the real Rainewood would grasp and use mockingly for all it was worth.

“No. I have to admit to some belief in your fairy tales now, but I can’t be dead. Not if I can touch you.” His thumb caressed her lip. “Perhaps even taste you.”

The feeling of his semi-solid chest made her breath catch. She pushed away from him and put her dressing chair between them. “Don’t come any closer.”

He crossed his arms. “You aren’t being very accommodating, Abigail.”

“Since when do you call me that?” She narrowed her eyes and began sorting through her options. They were few.

“I used to call you something else.” He prowled closer, the curve of his lips taking on a much more rakish slant. “Didn’t I?”

The sound of low, quick breaths reached her ears, and she realized she was panting. The feeling inside of her increased. Knots of tension and desire. He skirted the chair and came within a few feet of her.

“You call me Smart.”

One finger raised and brushed the stray wisp from her brow. The gesture too intimate. “There was a time long ago that I called you something else.”

The knots grew larger. Too large, as though she would explode from them.

“Before your brother died.”

The skin at the corner of his eyes tightened and he stepped back an inch. Relief and distress ran through her in equal measures.

“Yes, before Thornton.” His voice was several shades colder.

A part of her withered at the loss of intimacy, but this was firmer territory—a battlefield she knew well. If he played on this ground she could better believe it was the real Rainewood—or at least a real spirit of him—in front of her and not just her own imagination making a copy of the Rainewood she used to wish for.

She fingered the brush on her dressing table. “You suddenly believe in my fairy tales, do you? And now you desire my help.”

His eyes narrowed. “I was transported somewhere. I could
feel
again.” The ardor in his voice mixed with anger. “Mostly pain. I need to escape from there. I need you.”

She curled her lower lip in and nibbled on it as she moved her ivory brush to and fro. Touching the brush gave her equal measures of comfort and distress, as usual.

“You don’t believe me.” His voice was clipped.

She looked up and tried to decipher the expressions flickering across his face before his features retreated into the icy mask he had worn for nearly a decade. “The boot is on the other foot now then, isn’t it?” She said it as simply as she could, but the underlying anger and past hurt crept through the words.

His face went blank. They stood in a parody of a standoff for several moments.

“Believe what my eyes and body told me when I woke.”

“But I’m not even sure I can believe what my own eyes or skin tells me—and I am fully awake.”

He reached out a hand, but dropped it when she shrunk away. “And what do they tell you?”

She shook her head, pressing her lips together. “Do you know where your body might be?”

“No.”

“Then we have a dilemma, regardless of the issue of trust.”

“You will find me.” His voice held the same old arrogance, but the core confidence behind the assertion made her look at him more sharply.

“Will I?”

“You have the uncanny ability to manipulate things to your advantage, especially when it comes to me.” There was a touch of darkness to his tone.

“I do not share your confidence.” Nothing was ever to her advantage when it came to him.

“You found me at Grayton House.”

“Only because that is one of your homes. And it’s where I first saw you like this,” she said pointedly.

“There’s a reason you can see me when others can’t. To help. Everything in me says that you will make me whole.”

The phrasing made her heart clench and she angrily shook the feeling away.

“I have tried to tell you—multiple times and at multiple points in our lives”—she didn’t back down under his suddenly closed look—“I see everyone like this. Yes, you are an anomaly in many ways, but I assure you that I’ve been seeing spirits since…for a long time,” she finished lamely.

She still remembered her first spirit with the crystal clarity of a nightmare come to life. A likeness of the man standing before her.

He didn’t respond, which irritated her.

“What about Mr. Templing? He disappeared with you.”

“Yes.” He nodded and seemed more than ready to grasp this new thread and veer from the previous subject. “We should go to his house. Break in. And to the gaming hell. There is something there. I know it. I feel it.”

She shook her head. She didn’t have the first clue how she could break into Templing’s house, no less a gaming hell. And then to find a clue to Rainewood’s whereabouts?

She shivered at the thought of finding him in some shallow grave instead.

“Speaking of your friend…” She grimaced. “Where is Oxting Stables? No, a better question, what is Oxting Stables?”

“It’s a stableyard between London and New-market.”

She closed her eyes in relief. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought perhaps I had said something worse.”

“It couldn’t have been too much worse, Smart.” He shook his head. “No one knows of Oxting outside of an elite group of men. That you would know the name is highly strange.”

Well, that explained the looks, then. “You volunteered the information!”

He shrugged.

“I know what you’ve been doing.” She shook a finger. “I won’t let you make me say things anymore. No more touching.”

He was in front of her before she saw him move. Fingers sliding down her arms. “You don’t want that, Smart.”

“You are using me, Rainewood,” she said in a voice far more calm than she felt. “You always have. And now you demand I do your bidding. Finally forced to believe the
tales
I’ve always told.”

“I am not forced to believe you, Smart. This could all be some crazed dream still.”

“Then in that crazed dream you are going to be vastly disappointed when I fail to comply.”

“Visit Templing’s tonight, Smart,” his voice was low and coaxing.

“You have hardly given me incentive to do so. One, you are an ass. Two, you are using me once again when it is convenient to do so. And three, you are
dead
.”

“I’ll give you something in return.”

“I don’t want a nagging ghost following me around for the rest of my waking hours, thank you.”

“I’ll help you find a suitable husband.”

She stopped twitching the brush. “Come again?”

He crossed his arms, eyes dark. “I will help you secure a husband. I’ll make sure that certain
facts
stay hidden in your marriage quest. I’ll even give you a highly sought-after
nod
in the middle of a gathering.”

She swallowed. “I could do without the sarcasm, thank you.” But the offer was tempting. “If I help you regain your form, should you truly still be alive somewhere, in return you will not only stop hindering my marital state, but will help further it?”

“That is what I said.”

“It would help me believe you more if you didn’t sound so irritated.”

“Fine.” He smoothed his lips into a smile that most would find quite pleasant, indeed charming, had it reached his eyes. “I would greatly desire to help you marry one of your wretches, if you would but do me the honor of bloody helping me out of this situation.”

“You are terrible at making deals sound tempting, Rainewood.” His eyes narrowed. “But…” She lifted her fingers from the brush and folded her hands primly in front of her. “I accept.”

The deal had the further incentive of allowing her to pretend that he wasn’t dead yet. She wasn’t quite ready to give in to the thought that he would disappear for good at any moment.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

They stared at each other for a long moment and she wondered how he could brood so well even as a spirit.

“We start at Templing’s,” he said.

She crossed her arms to mirror his. “Fine. I don’t know why I’m worried. This is going to fail from the outset. I’ll never gain entrance to his house.”

“Hardly a problem.” His face relaxed and he flashed a smile that made her heart pick up a few beats.

“I don’t see how you can say that. His butler is hardly going to let me in to search with impunity.”

“No, but I know where he hides his spare key.”

Going to Templing’s house—sneaking away in general—was as hard as she thought it would be. Why had she ever agreed to this stupid plan? A handsome face, some charming words, a pretty deal, and an internal tension she couldn’t deny—all of it spelled trouble.

She released an oof as she tumbled from the top of the short, vined wall and tripped into the bushes outside of the Carters’ sortie.

Rainewood snorted as he stepped through the wall. “Graceful.”

“Shut up, Rainewood.” She brushed her skirt, trying to dislodge the greenery from the fabric and not to think about what the devil she was doing,
why
she was doing it, and
how
she had been talked into the actions. If she reentered the ball with bits of leaves and twigs, she doubted even Mrs. Browning’s reputation would be able to save her. “We have fifteen minutes to do this, and I’m completely unamused so far.”

He snorted again and started down the street. She looked furtively in both directions before following him. Templing’s house was only half a block from the ball. Her slipper caught on a rough patch of the walk and she tripped.

“Smart, my god, you have to be the most graceless, most incompet—”

She caught up with him and poked him in the chest. Her finger held for a moment before sinking through. Just enough of a moment to stop him dead.

Well, perhaps that wasn’t the best way to describe it.

“I do not have to help you,” she whispered harshly. “Remember that, Rainewood. Remember that I am the one with the power now. So shut…up.”

His eyes narrowed, but he continued forth, silently this time.

They reached Number Ninety-two a minute later. She had a moment of stupid clarity as she realized something far too late.

“Anyone could leave the party early, drive by, and see us.” She frantically shook her head, trying to dislodge some of the panic that was collecting there. “See me, I mean!”

“Yes, yes, right, right. Your spotless reputation will come to ruin.”

“Rainewood, don’t be more of an ass than you already are. You know perfectly well what—”

He touched her arm, the light force sending a shiver through her. “Your reputation is under more stress the longer you are about. The key is in there.” He pointed to a bush in a large planter at the right of the door. “Dig around a bit and you’ll find it.”

“Dig around?”

He waved his hand. “Well, come on, we haven’t all night, as you said.”

She furtively looked in all directions. The street was blessedly devoid of activity for a block or two. Thankfully, no one seemed to be around, but all it would take was one inquisitive neighbor peering through a window or a carriage rolling down the street to catch her out.

Stupid, thy name is Abigail.

She gave Rainewood a dirty look and plunged her hand into the soil at the base of the bush. To her relief, her fingers touched something solid and coolly metallic. She retrieved the key, gave one more furtive look to the street, and inserted it into the lock.

As soon as it turned, she pushed the door open and hurried inside. Rainewood slipped in after her, but his face was creased in concentration, and he shivered as he crossed the threshold.

The lights were out in the house, just as they had appeared from the outside. Rainewood pointed to the stairs, seeming to forget for the moment that she was the only one who could hear him. She nodded and walked on slippered feet to the base. The servants would be abed below stairs. She briefly wondered how they were taking their master’s absence.

The first stair creaked as she put her weight on it. She winced.

“Good one, Smart. Way to sneak around and be discreet.” Rainewood seemed to recall that he could speak, unfortunately.

“Not all of us are ghosts, you donkey,” she hissed and took another step, one closer to the banister. When that yielded only the sound of her slipper, she tentatively took a few more. It seemed like an age, but she finally made it to the second landing.

“One more level up.”

She withheld a groan and continued the slow pace upstairs, following Rainewood until they reached a chestnut furnished study. Rainewood walked toward the desk, giving her a look when she didn’t follow. She was too busy eyeing the sculptures and strange art on the walls. Who knew that Mr. Templing so enjoyed the ballet? Naked ballerinas, to be sure, but ballerinas all the same.

“Smart, get over here and paw through these.”

She absently obeyed, still examining the art.

“Smart, you are going to get caught. Stay on task.”

“I’m sorry that I was not better trained as a housebreaker. I will endeavor to up my game in the future.”

“Good.”

She wanted to kick him. If he were corporeal, she just might give in to the urge.

She started sifting through the papers. Markers and debt logs dotted the surface. “Your group engages in entirely too much betting,” she murmured. “Why here is a marker made out to Mr. Templing for twenty thousand pounds.”

He leaned closer. “From whom?”

“Aidan Campbell.”

Rainewood shook his head. “Fool.”

“Oh, are you trying to say that you don’t engage in the same behavior?”

“I don’t lose those types of sums.”

“But you make the bets.”

“Of course.”

She shook her head. “You are the fool as well, then.”

There was a creak and every muscle in Abigail’s body stiffened. A furtive little man came into view mumbling about debts and mergers. He walked over, checked some invisible books on the desk, then walked through the wall. She breathed a sigh of relief, her muscles struggling to relax. If it had been someone real…