Her Secret Fantasy (33 page)

“How dare you speak to me in such a disgusting fashion?” She tried to shove his arms off her waist, but his bearlike embrace only tightened. “God, you are so impossibly crude.”

“Yes, but I’m exactly what you need. Come, Lily, my angel, just one kiss.”

“I really do not feel like kissing you right now, Edward,” she announced, struggling to keep her cool air well in hand. “You lied to me and you smell like a tavern floor.”

“Aw, surely all my gold is worth that much to you, at least.”

“You are behaving like a thoroughgoing boor!”

“One proper kiss and you can go. Come, I know you’ve got more fire in you than you gave me before. I can smell it in your blood.”

She looked at him evenly, though inside, she was quaking—and revolted. But if this was what it was going to take to get her out of here in one piece, so be it. “Just be quick about it,” she muttered, bracing herself as he leaned toward her.

“Ah!” In the next moment, his rough and slobbery kiss was upon her, rather like a pack of rabid hounds. He was stale and sweaty and he smelled like a dirty washrag, and if she were not so expert at controlling her reactions, Lily would have screamed, or at the very least gagged at the incursion of his tongue in her mouth and the wretched taste of his recent overindulgence. “Very nice,” Edward rasped after a moment, but instead of releasing her, he came right back for more.

As he began groping her, Lily was shocked at his aggressiveness and tried to squirm free. He ignored her protest as she tried to push him away, but when he squeezed her breast, they both stopped short at the sound of crinkling paper.

Her eyes widened.

Edward pulled back a small space and looked at her in confusion.

Her face suddenly gone ashen, Lily panicked, pulling out of his grasp and launching herself toward the door, but Edward grabbed her arm and yanked her back to him with a booming yell.
“What are you hiding?”

“Nothing! Let go of me!”

With a wrench of her shoulder, he spun her to face him. “What are you really doing here?”

“I already told you—”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh, really?” He reached out and cupped her breast in rough insolence, his hand discovering not just yielding female flesh, but the rigid square of folded paper tucked inside the neat white buttoned shirt of her riding habit.

His eyes burned with fury when he looked at her again. “Damn you!”

“Edward—” She cried out as he grabbed the edges of her bodice in both meaty hands and ripped it open with a violent tear.

Lily instinctively tried to cover herself, but he had no interest in her body at the moment. He snatched the Phillip Kane papers out of the top of her chemise above her stays. Holding her in place against the wall with one hand clamped around her throat, Edward shook the folds of paper loose and saw what she had stolen.

Slowly, he turned to her in shock. “You lying little
bitch.
” He threw her away from him, sending her tumbling onto the floor in a heap of brown skirts and ripped broadcloth, her hair falling from its tidy chignon.

He loomed over her. Lily cowered on the floor, trying to protect herself and hold her ripped bodice together at the same time.

“You barge in here and try to pretend that I’m the one who’s caught for a bit of fun at a tavern? But you! You’re the one who’s caught, my haughty lady.” He grabbed her by her hair and wrenched her head back, leaning down to snarl in her face, “You’re goin’ to pay for this.”

“Edward, please!”

“Knight put you up to this, didn’t he?
Answer me!
” he roared.
“Are you fucking him?”

“No!” she screamed.

“Well, I don’t believe you,” he said quietly after a pause. “You’ve forced me to it, Lily. Now I’m going have to kill ’im.”

“Edward, no!”

“Oh, yes. I see it all now. Nobody plays Ed Lundy for a fool. The both of you are going to pay.” He released her roughly and stomped over to the door, throwing it open.

He bellowed for his henchmen.

Lily barely had five seconds to think of what to do before he was back, towering over her. For a second, she cowered in fear, expecting that he was going to start kicking her.

Every time she started to get up, he pushed her down again. “You stay right there, you filthy little fortune hunter. You stay on the floor, where you belong.”

Lily flinched, and Edward laughed.

Bates came running and blinked when he saw her. “How the hell did she get in here?”

“You tell me!” Edward bellowed. “You fools let her pass!”

More of his thugs rushed into the doorway in answer to their master’s wrathful summons.

“Jones, Maguire, search the property,” Bates ordered. “Make sure she came alone.”

“Yes, do,” Edward added in sarcasm. “Incompetents,” he muttered under his breath.

Lily could no longer hold her tongue. “Edward, there is no need to speak of killing Derek—”

“You little backstabbing harlot, think you can save your lover by lying to me?”

“If anything happens to Derek Knight, you’ll be the first person the authorities will want to speak to,” she shot back, thinking fast, “especially after your drunken spree with that rakehell—too much liquor has started many a duel, even between so-called friends. That’s what they’ll think.” Her jaw clenched in determination, Lily climbed warily to her feet, on guard lest he try to knock her down again. Her heart was pounding and her chest heaved as she held her torn bodice together.

At least now she had his full attention.

“Then there’s the small matter of Gabriel Knight, Derek’s brother. He’s said to be an even fiercer warrior than Derek is. All those powerful cousins of theirs—the Duke of Hawkscliffe, Lords Winterley, Rackford, Griffith—all of them. Don’t be a fool,” she warned Edward with total conviction. “If you strike him down, they will
all
come after you. You won’t stand a chance.”

He considered her words, then shrugged them off with a glower full of stubborn pride. “I’m not afraid of them.” He glanced at Bates. “Ready the others. We’re going after him.”

“Ill-advised, Edward. Very ill-advised, unless you don’t mind sacrificing a few of your boyhood mates to his sword.” Lily nodded at Bates. “Derek Knight is a warrior with years of combat experience. You really think you and your little army of East End bruisers can take him down?”

He sent her an unpleasant smile. “We’ll manage.”

Her desperation climbed as Edward turned away and headed for the door with a curt order for one of his men. “Tie her up and don’t let her out of your sight.”

“Edward, wait! If you would just calm down, there is another way to get rid of him!”

He paused, his back to her. He seemed to debate with himself in annoyance, then turned around and looked at her impatiently. “Very well. I’ll bite. How?”

Lily’s mouth had grown so dry she could barely force the words out. “Capture him, but don’t kill him. Throw him on a ship bound for India. Then he’ll be out of your way and no one can accuse you of murdering anyone.”

He stared at her, deliberating. “Kidnap him.”

“Precisely. Anyone who’s ever met the major has heard him say he can hardly wait to go back to India. So, let him. They’ll just assume he got tired of waiting and decided it was time to get back to his troops.”

Edward approached her once more with a menacing stare. “I have an even better idea. I deposit the two of you in a room at some unsavory hotel, each dead of a gunshot wound to the head. They’ll call it a lovers’ quarrel. Murder-suicide. A very scandalous end for such a fine lady, no?”

She flinched, but checked the dread that the bloody image inspired. “Frankly, I like my idea better.”

He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing her, then he began laughing quietly at her feeble jest and turned away once more. “Let’s go,” he said to his men.

Her frayed control snapped at the ease with which he ignored her.

“Edward!” she wrenched out with a sob. Panicked, she rushed after him and grabbed his arm as tears flooded her eyes. “Spare him! I’ll do anything you want!”

“Well, now.” He turned to her with a sinister leer. “That is an interesting offer, Miss Balfour.”

Her heart in her throat, her body suddenly gone ice cold, Lily forced herself to hold his gaze.

“Exactly what are you willing to do?” he asked, mocking her.

She did not answer.

“I’ll not marry you.”

“I know.”

“On the other hand…” He cupped her chin and tilted her head back, inspecting her face as though she were some wretched Roman slave girl for sale in the shadow of the Colosseum. “I daresay I could find a use for ye.”

His men joined in his jeering laughter.

“What do you say to that offer, my proud Miss Balfour? Your services as I please for the major’s life?”

Lily said nothing, but lowered her gaze, turning scarlet. Her lack of outrage at his indecent words was enough, she trusted, to signal her submission to the hideous pact.

She could feel Edward’s gaze consuming her. “Boys, I’m feeling magnanimous. I think we can spare the major, after all.”

“Oh, come on, Ed!” Bates protested. “There’s no need to make bargains with the likes of ’er! You can have the wench whether she’s willing or not!”

Edward cast him a swinish smile. “Not much sport in that, eh?”

Lily held her breath, fearing her fate, but noting the fleeting look of uncertainty in Edward’s eyes.

There was lust and violence there, but also, the slightest glimmer of heart. Perhaps he wondered what his mother would have to say about all this. Perhaps a part of him did not
want
to kill Derek despite his hotheaded first reaction.

Edward looked away, quick to conceal the glimpse of humanity. “No,” he ordered in a gruff tone. “We’ll put him on the first ship bound for India. No sense tangling with the whole Knight family, like she said. Nor do I fancy a visit from them Bow Street blackguards, either.” He looked at Lily from her head to her feet. “You’d better make this worth my while.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Bates grumbled. “Damn lot easier just to kill the bastard. If Knight’s as practiced with a weapon as she claims, then how are we supposed to get close enough to restrain him?”

Edward glanced at Lily. “He’ll come to her, won’t he, love? Little virgin and the unicorn, eh? You want him to live, you help us take him nice and easy.”

She cried out in fright as Edward grabbed her arm again and dragged her toward his desk, pushing her down into the chair and then slapping a piece of paper before her along with a quill pen.

“Go on,” he ordered. “Write him a nice little love letter telling him to meet you tonight…”

Lily missed the rest of Edward’s cold words as she gazed at the sharp letter opener tucked away in the cubbyhole of the desk directly in her line of sight.

For a second, she wondered if she could stab him with it, fight her way out of here. But that was absurd.

In her fantasies, maybe, the little girlhood dreams she had spun at the garden folly, but in real life, she was no warrior. Not like Derek. She had her wits, he had his sword, and between the two of them, that would have to be enough.

“Tell him to come to the mews behind Mrs. Clearwell’s house. We don’t want to arouse our fine warrior’s suspicions.”

“Oh, Edward, please,” she breathed, and looked up to search his face in guarded pleading.

“Do it!” he roared at her, bringing his fist down on the paper before her.

She jumped. Handling the pen like a foreign object, clumsily dipping it into the ink with trembling fingers, she began to write, her tears spilling onto the page.

For she realized now that after the angry way they had parted, Derek was going to walk into that dark alley tonight and think she had betrayed him.

CHAPTER

         
SIXTEEN
         

“I
t really is the most curious thing,” Charles was saying to Derek, who leaned against the opposite wall, arms folded across his chest, his brow furrowed in thought.

He had come to the solicitor’s tidy Whitehall office directly, even before traveling on homeward to the Althorpe. He had a bit of a headache from his excesses outside of Town and was in need of a heavy meal, but this had been too important to delay.

“Why such a respected and dignified peer as Lord Sinclair should have made a payment from his accounts to an infamous scoundrel like Phillip Kane, well, it quite baffles the understanding. I know not what it signifies, but I had a feeling you would want the details, such as they are.”

“Oh, yes, Charles. You were quite right to send for me.”

“Here you have it.” Charles glanced at his notes. “Five thousand pounds, dated almost exactly two years ago.”

“Hm. Five thousand pounds is no trifling sum.” He took a swig of water from his canteen, still a bit dry-mouthed after his excursion to all those pubs. “So, what do we know of this Phillip Kane fellow?”

“Ah, his name was quite familiar to those of us in legal circles, for he was constantly running afoul of the constabulary, getting into all sorts of trouble. Somehow he always delivered a fine cock-and-bull tale to explain his latest mischief, and he’d tell it with a smile. Half the time, his smooth talking worked, too, even on the magistrates. He had a charming air. Good-looking fellow, flamboyant, with the manners of a gentleman—but thoroughly dissipated. An adventurer, always on the make with some new scheme. Pity he didn’t deign to turn his talents to honest measures, but he seemed to feel the world had wronged him.”

“How?”

“Well, he was rumored to be the bastard son of some high-ranking aristocrat, by an opera girl,” Charles said with a grimace of distaste. “He grew up around the theater world and learned all of its vices at an early age.”

“An actor?”

Charles shrugged. “I never heard of him taking to the stage himself, but whatever skills he picked up among their breed seemed to serve him best with the ladies and at the gaming tables. He had a reputation as a womanizer, but mainly he was known as a cardsharp. It seemed to me quite plausible that Lord Sinclair could have paid him to settle a gaming debt.”

Derek shook his head. “Lord Sinclair doesn’t touch the cards. They would’ve never appointed him to the committee if he had any history as a gambler. All that money under his care…” He paused. “Of course, His Lordship could have paid Kane off on behalf of a younger male relative, a son or nephew who might’ve been stung by this sharper’s gift with the cards and the dice.”

“Ah, that could be.” Charles nodded, pursing his lips. “Do you wish me to look into it, Major?”

Derek waved off the offer. “I’ll do it. I think it’ll be extremely enlightening to have a little chat with Lord Sinclair about his dealings with this man. I’d also like to talk to Phillip Kane, if you know where he can be found.”

“The boneyard, I’m afraid.”

“He’s dead?” Derek asked in surprise.

“Quite.” Charles handed him a newspaper clipping that proved to be an obituary. “It was all a bit of a mystery, actually. To be sure, Phillip Kane made a great many enemies in his short, colorful life. Whatever he had done this time, or whomever he’d crossed, it was enough to inspire him to flee to France. Apparently at Calais it was not long before he resumed his usual mode of life, but the French must not have enjoyed being abused by his various talents any more than our gambling set here in London did, for within a few weeks, his landlady found him dead in his rooms. Poisoned.”

Derek raised a brow. “Poison? Hmm, a woman’s weapon. Revenge perhaps from some heartbroken former conquest?”

“Certainly I could believe that, but there were plenty of people who would’ve wished him dead.” Charles shrugged. “I remember the case well, for those of us in the legal world rather knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, only a question of when and how. One of the newspapers had sniffed out a copy of the local prefect’s report, and as I recall, nothing was taken from Kane’s rooms. No sign of a struggle. The most popular theories in circulation were that it was either a former lover or a suicide.”

“No note to justify the latter?”

“No. Eventually, when a few months passed and nothing was ever found—and with no one who seemed inclined to lament the scoundrel’s passing—the case faded into obscurity.” Charles sighed. “Well, if Kane had had the courtesy to be murdered in England, it would have been easier to pursue, but his dying abroad, well, there was also the slight complication that solving it would have required our English and French justice officials to work together, and neither side was inclined to be too friendly about sharing information.”

“How convenient for whoever killed him,” Derek said softly. Then he paused. “When did they discover his corpse? How long ago did this happen?”

Charles glanced at the papers. “More than a year now. Fourteen months, to be exact.”

Derek nodded, mulling it over. “Very well. Excellent work, Mr. Beecham. Perhaps Lord Sinclair can shed further light on the matter. I shall pay a call on him on my way home.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you now, Major?”

Derek smiled. “Just keep looking over those books as much as the Bank will allow it. Let me know if you find anything else.”

Charles smiled and gave him a slight salute.

Derek paused on the way out, with a sudden last question. “Did the London rumor mill ever posit what ‘high-ranking aristocrat’ might have fathered Phillip Kane?”

“There was an active theory about, one I heard whispered at the Temple Bar.”

“I had no idea you lawyers were such gossips.”

Charles laughed. “Apparently an earl had quietly paid Kane’s legal debts after one of his arrests.”

“Who was it?” Derek asked, fascinated. “Surely it wasn’t Lord Sinclair?”

“No, but now that you mention it, it was another member of your committee. Or ex-member, I should say. Lord Fallow.”

Derek stared at him. Lord Fallow, their host the night of the garden concert where he had walked down to the river beside Lily.

Lord Fallow—Ed Lundy’s loyal patron.

“I thought…Lord Fallow had no son,” Derek said slowly. Somewhere along the way, he had heard that the lack of a son was partly why the noble lord had taken the lowborn Lundy under his wing.

“Yes, well, according to the world, he did not,” Charles replied. “His Lordship certainly never acknowledged Phillip Kane as his own. Of course, with the way Kane conducted himself, I’m not sure I would, either,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t place too much faith in the veracity of this claim, though, Major. ’Twas only a rumor, one that Kane may easily have started himself just to cause trouble. This was the same man who claimed that Her Royal Highness, Princess Charlotte, God rest her soul, had winked at him once when the royal chariot passed him on Pall Mall.”

Derek’s lips twisted at the outlandish tale.

Charles frowned. “Of course, if it were true…” His words trailed off as he eased down into his seat behind his desk, frowning.

“If it were true,” Derek said, “then Phillip Kane would’ve had a very strong reason to hate Edward Lundy.”

Charles murmured his agreement.

Mystified, Derek nodded at him and then walked out of the office, pondering it all the way to Lord Sinclair’s.

When he reached the earl’s home, a post-boy ran over, offering to hold his horse’s bridle for a shilling. Derek accepted his services, warned him about the horse’s temperamental nature, then strode up to the earl’s front door and banged the brass knocker.

When the butler appeared, he was no more pleased to see Derek than he had been last time and informed him that the earl was not at home.

With one eye on the butler and the other on the boy doing his best to keep the black stallion under control, Derek shrugged off his hopes of a visit for the moment and decided it could wait. He left his calling card instead, eager to get home at last after the strain of his revelries away from Town.

Returning to his horse, he tossed the boy the promised shilling and mounted up again. But as he rode away, he felt the hair on his nape bristle up with the instinctual perception of eyes on his back. Suddenly, he could feel somebody watching him.

He glanced back casually at Sinclair’s house and spotted movement in the upper window. Just before the curtain swung back into place, he glimpsed a portly figure staring out the window.

Looking ahead again, he scowled.
Lying bastard. Sinclair’s at home, he just didn’t want to see me.
Of course, it was no surprise. He was not exactly the chairman’s favorite person.

No matter. He would track the earl down later someplace where he could not run for cover, then he’d ask his questions. Preferably after a meal, a bath, and at least a few hours of sleep.

When Derek brought his black stallion into the stable at the Althorpe and handed him over to the grooms, he found the two lads grinning from ear to ear.

“Your lady friend came, Major.”

“She took the mare.”

“Lily?” he exclaimed. “I mean—Miss Balfour?”

“Aye, that’s ’er.”

“She told us to tell you thanks, she did.”

“Thanks?” he echoed. Well! He had told her he intended to give her the horse, and after her displeasure with him due to finding him half drunk at that tavern last night, it seemed she was quite content to collect her present, thank you very much and au revoir. “Did she, she say anything else? Like…if she might be coming back at all?”

“No, sir.”

“Just—thanks.”

He sighed, then scratched his scruffy cheek, in need of a shave. “If she happens to bring the horse back, would one of you lads be so good as to come and let me know?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Thanks.” Upon returning to his apartment, he gave Aadi and the other servants a similar order. Then he went into his chamber and crashed down onto his bed. He was asleep in minutes.

Without dreams.

A knock at his chamber door some time later roused him. Derek blinked his way back to consciousness, certain he’d only just closed his eyes.

When he raised up a bit, he saw his brother poking his head in the door, waving his mail with a rare grin. “Special delivery for the major.”

Derek shot upward. “Colonel Montrose?”

“Better,” Gabriel replied. He walked in and tossed the letter onto Derek’s stomach.

He picked it up at once and tore it open, silent as his gaze scanned the few lines. “It’s from Lily.”

“I know. What’s it say? You’re forgiven? She hates you?”

“It doesn’t say,” he answered, rather wide-eyed with the sudden wake-up after such a deep sleep. “She wants to see me.”

“That could be very good. Or very bad.” Gabriel laughed wickedly, gave him a knowing look, and then withdrew, leaving his “little brother” to agonize privately over what the maddening lady might have to say.

Ten P.M,
her missive ordered him. Derek scowled.
You mean I have to wait?

When the appointed hour of their secret rendezvous arrived at last, Derek looked into the pitch-black mouth of the alleyway ahead and took an instant dislike to the place.

He wasn’t sure why he was seized with such a strong gut reaction to their designated meeting point, but when you served in combat long enough…

Something didn’t feel right.

His first thought was for Lily’s safety. Damn it, what was she thinking, a young lady alone, loitering out here after dark? Even genteel Mayfair had its footpads. And worse.

If anyone dared hurt her…

“Lily?” He swept the inky gloom with a slow, careful glance, and only then got down off his horse, his movements cautious, watchful.

He could not see her. But he thought he heard some small noise ahead.

Bloody hell.

Either he was being insanely overprotective, or there was more than one person in that alley.

Overprotective.

That had to be it. This wasn’t India.