How to Master Your Marquis (13 page)

“We’re not?”

Hatherfield slung her down in the center of the floor and closed the door behind them. “Of course not. We’re going to lark across a few rooftops first.”

“Across
what?
”

“The rooftops. Easy enough, really. We’ll drop to earth somewhere around Frith Street, and then . . .” He unlocked the sash and pressed his fingers under the frame. “. . . And then get you . . . get you safely back . . . to the safe . . .”

“What’s the matter?”

He stepped back with a frown. “The window. It’s stuck.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. A big fellow like you.” Thomas marched up next to him and positioned herself underneath the window. “Just put a little . . . a bit of . . . effort . . . like . . . like this . . .”

“Thomas . . .”

“It’s . . . I felt it give a bit . . .”

“It’s nailed shut, Thomas.”

Thomas drew away and stared at the window. “Nailed shut? Why the devil would anyone nail a window shut?”

“To keep the customers inside, I presume.” Hatherfield set his lips in a firm line and turned around. Ominous rattles vibrated the walls. The shouts were growing louder. “They’re coming upstairs.”

“You see! I told you we should head for the back exit! Now we’re stuck here! Like . . . like rats in a trap!” Thomas’s hands thrust into her hair.

“Rubbish.” Hatherfield took her hand, went to the door, and opened it. A hail of shouts met his ears, the faint screeching of trapped humanity. No escape there.

“They’re coming!” said Thomas, in a hiss. “Close the door!”

“No. No, leave it open. Come here.”

“What the devil?”

Hatherfield dragged her to the wardrobe, opened the door, and bundled her inside. An outraged cry emerged, muffled by cloth.

Hatherfield stepped in after her and pulled the door shut.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she whispered in his ear. Literally in his ear, for the wardrobe was tiny, stuffed to the gills with clothing, cheap silk from the feel of it, and Thomas’s lips were so close he felt their warmth brushing his ear.

“Be still,” he whispered back, and just to be sure of her obedience, and
only
to be sure, he wrapped his left arm around her and pulled her right up flush against his body.

She made a tiny yelp and went silent.

The wardrobe was narrow and deep. Hatherfield maneuvered her against the backboard and laid his own body protectively atop her, the blades of his shoulders brushing the door, his arms and shoulders surrounded by displaced silk. He ignored the feel of her limbs against his, her warm breath into his neck. He ignored the tantalizing swell at her chest, covered by wool and cotton and God knew what, but unmistakably softer than muscle. He ignored the scratch of her mustache at his collar, perversely and intensely arousing. He concentrated entirely on the sounds thudding through the wood and plaster, the pattern of footsteps on the stairs and the hall.

Oh, all right. He was doing his best, anyway.

His body had other notions. According to the mounting evidence.

Concentrate.
The police were starting from the top of the house, no surprise, but there would certainly be guards posted at every stairway. No more screeching now. Had all the prostitutes and clients left in the first rush?

Bang, bang, bang
. Doors opened and slammed shut above him. The police were searching the rooms, then, one by one. Bloody hell. A fitting end to a frustrating day.

And yet.

God, she felt good. She felt delicious. Her rigid muscles were softening now, taking his bones and sinews into the shelter of her, inviting exploration. Her skin smelled like honey. He imagined himself licking the hollow of her throat, tasting her pulse, and the seams of his trousers nearly split in response.

He tried to angle his hips away, but only managed an inch or so before his buttocks nudged the wardrobe door. Would she notice the thickening bulge? Damn it all, of course she would notice. The question was whether she would know what it meant, and he rather thought . . .

Concentrate.
Spike the senses, coil the muscles. Ready to strike. He leaned his ear against the wood, the better to hear the progress upstairs, but now his mouth was full of her hair, loosened from its pomade grip, falling silky and scented about her face. A tiny noise escaped her. She moved her hips forward, just slightly, as if . . . God help him.

As if seeking the return of his own.

He flipped his other cheek to the wood, away from her tempting hair and head, trying to listen to the wood and not the beat of his own desperate pulse, but his traitorous hips could not resist the inviting shift of hers, like the rock of a cradle, and he fit himself against her, a perfect match, good God, brain spinning, thumbs brushing against her shirt, the distant pounding and slamming of impending disaster in his ears. Madness.

“Hatherfield,” she whispered, right into his neck.

Do not kiss her.

A warmth touched his waist, beneath his coat. Her fingers, sliding along the seam where his waistcoat met his trousers.

You sweet thing.
Did he say the words, or think them?

“Hatherfield,” she whispered again. “Is it safe?”

“Not yet. Shh.”

That was her heart, he realized, pumping through the layers between them. Thomas’s heart. Her handprint turned hot at his waist, right there in the most sensitive spot. Her thumb nudged past the hem of his waistcoat to find his shirt. His skin, a few linen threads away.

Do not kiss her.

The alarm beat in his brain, danger clanging against the white light of sexual desire, the familiar scorching need that electrified every muscle. He was a satyr, a monster, just as his stepmother had always said. What kind of beast held a young lady’s life in his hands, charged to protect her, and in that same moment pushed his shamefully erect cock into her innocent hips? He had probably maneuvered her into the wardrobe on purpose, if he were honest with himself. Tucked her in his arms and covered her with his body not to shield her, but because he’d been thinking of nothing else but bedding her since he’d met her. He had done this all for his own prurient sexual interest, hadn’t he, when he might have bustled her safely outside with only a little more effort and ingenuity.

Hatherfield turned his head and let his lips hover at her temple. His eyes, adjusting to the darkness, began to pick up the faint shadow of her, not even vision really, more the sense of her, her outline against the black wood.

She tilted her head, ever so slightly, just enough that Hatherfield’s lips met her temple.

Turn away.

But his lips, his guilty lips, stayed there on her skin, and she didn’t move, either. Didn’t jerk away, didn’t gasp in shock.

He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She must know, then. She must realize that he knew she was a woman, and if she did . . . well, then what?

Then he was in even more trouble than he’d imagined.

Thump, thump
. Footsteps in the hall outside.

Hatherfield held his breath in his chest, held his lips against her temple, everything still and hot and waiting. A sense of crystalline expectation, the instant before the glass shattered.

The door banged open against the wall.

Hatherfield absorbed the flinch of Thomas’s body. She pressed herself into him, her forehead tucked against his jaw, both hands around his waist. His aroused flesh nestled in the hollow between her hips.

He closed his eyes, the better to detect the movement of booted feet about the room. One man. Not urgent. He took a few deliberate steps and stopped. The floorboards creaked beneath the rug. A heavy shuffle, as he turned about. Perhaps picked up and examined Hannah’s discarded petticoats.

After that first flinch, Thomas lay perfectly still. Not a whimper escaped her lips, not a ripple moved her muscles. Only her finger went on with its tiny up-and-down motions at his waist, as if to remind him that she was still alive, still there in his arms, making his skin mist and his heart pound. Her breath in his neck was steady and brave. Hatherfield might have thought she’d been hiding out from police in brothel wardrobes all her life.

Who knew? Maybe she had.

The floorboards creaked again. Slow, deliberate. Closer.

Closer.

Thomas’s finger stopped its caress and dug into his skin. Hatherfield thought he could hear the policeman breathing, heavy and rapid, through the clothes and the wood between them.

Another step. A long pause. Another step.

And then, in a rush, the boots thudded back across the floor and out the door.

NINE

S
tefanie could not stop chattering as the Marquess of Hatherfield’s private hansom rattled through the London streets toward Cadogan Square. “I really thought I should slip on that last rooftop, with all the shingles missing. Really, people ought to take better care of their houses, don’t you think?”

“Indeed.”

“How fortunate you were behind me, instead of in front. You quite saved me. Of course, I’ve no doubt the gutter would have stopped me eventually, but it would have been an exceptionally bumpy ride in the meantime.”

“Indeed.”

Hatherfield spoke in exactly the same tone he’d maintained since opening the wardrobe door some half an hour ago, after a minute or two of massive silence in which Stefanie had been expecting his kiss at any instant, had been deciding what to do when it arrived. (
Kiss him back
, was her brain’s happy conclusion.) But the anticipated kiss had not, in fact, landed upon her lips. Only his body, heavy and hot, had lain against hers, with that steely bulge that made her want to crawl out of her own skin and into his, made her feverish and almost sick. Made her want to rub her hands and feet and body over every inch of his beautiful flesh, and especially those several thick inches pressed potently into her lower belly.

She had contented herself with a single finger at his waist.

Oh, all those feverish feelings, which had gotten her into such trouble before! They’d now returned at tenfold strength. Just sitting beside him now, she could hardly restrain herself from touching him. She should know better, she really should.

Especially since Hatherfield thought
she
was a
he
.

She went on speaking instead. “I hardly dare ask how you happened upon the establishment, and my room in particular, at exactly that moment. Followed closely by the police, I might add.”

He roused himself a fraction. “The police were a surprise, in fact.”

“And you?”

“I was looking out for you, young man. Isn’t it obvious?”

Stefanie straightened her shoulders. “I’m not in need of a nursemaid, your lordship.”

“Aren’t you? You seem to have gotten yourself into a right mess on your own. What the devil were you doing in a brothel to begin with, for God’s sake?” he demanded, with a little more vim, which was decidedly better than all those grim and ominous
Indeeds
he’d been sporting before.

Well, she wasn’t about to admit the truth. “Oh, you know how it is. Out with the lads for a pint or two, looking for amusement. Isn’t it obvious what I was doing?”

“You were on the floor when I arrived, Mr. Thomas. Looking considerably discomposed.”

“The lady didn’t suit me.”

Hatherfield snorted. “I daresay not. That doesn’t change the fact that you were there, in that bawdy house, an innocent . . . young person, when you should have been safe at home in your bed.”

“Safe at home? You sound like a dowager.”

“You need a dowager, Mr. Thomas.”

The words burst out. “No, I don’t! I’m not innocent. Not some damned lily-white virgin, after all.”

The carriage slowed, making the turn around Hyde Park Corner. Hatherfield placed his large gloved hand on the edge of the door, as if to steady himself. When he spoke, his voice had returned to that grim tone of before. “I see.”

Did he believe her, or not? She looked down at her hands, knotted together in her lap, atop the thick folds of her dreary black overcoat. Her breath exploded in a gust, and she realized she’d been holding it. She gathered herself and spoke defiantly. “Anyway, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have any amusement at all. I’m not the sort to lie quietly in my bed at night.”

“No, I daresay you’re not.”

“But you are.”

Hatherfield’s hand hadn’t left the hansom door. He rubbed his thumb slowly along the edge. “You make me sound rather dull,” he said, a little amused.

“I daresay you could use a little adventure, now and then.”

His laugh sent a cloud of fog into the London night. “You’re adventure enough, believe me, Mr. Thomas. It will be hard going for me, tomorrow morning on the river.”

“Well, it’s not as if you have to do it, do you?” Stefanie said. “You could stay home and sleep another hour or two.”

“No, I couldn’t,” he said softly.

“What, just for one morning?”

The hansom jounced over a rut and came to a sudden stop, where the traffic had thickened in its mysterious London night way. Hatherfield sighed. “Little one, you wouldn’t understand. Sometimes there’s just one thing holding you to your sanity. One true and honest thing in your life, and the rest is all pretense and ceremony and the face one wears in public. The face one’s obliged to wear. So you have to escape somewhere, every day, or you’ll go mad.”