Lady of Desire (10 page)

With that, he bent and tossed her traveling papers into the fire.

Her eyes widened. With a stricken cry, she rushed toward the hearth, but he caught her about her waist and held her back, hushing her softly as she watched her freedom go up in flames.

There was no helping some people, Blade thought with a mental huff as he sat across from Her Ladyship a short while later in the dark, shabby interior of the hackney coach. Well, what did she expect?

Daughter of a bloody duke.

Once more she was bundled up in her soiled coat, the buttons primly latched, her hair somewhat tamed again by the star-shaped pins. All her belongings had been thrown back into her satchel, and every penny that Eddie had stolen had been returned to her. Blade’s heart had nearly stopped when he had noticed that she wasn’t wearing her diamond necklace, thinking that one of his men might have deftly snatched it while he had gone to whistle for Jimmy, the coachman, but she had coldly informed him that she had put it in her satchel.

Those were the last words she had spoken to him. Now she wouldn’t even look at him. She sat across from him, staring out the window, looking withdrawn, betrayed, out of hope, and coldly angry. He knew he was doing the right thing, but just like a woman, she had decided to hate him for it. The mad chit had nearly dived headlong into the fire up there in his room trying to save her traveling papers. She would never make it to Dover in one piece, let alone France. At the moment, however, he was only glad she hadn’t resorted to the ultimate weapon of tears.

Still, the defeated look in her eyes made his stomach hurt vaguely, and the impossibility of ever seeing her again made him want to put his fist through something, not to mention the fact that her brothers were probably going to castrate him when they found out how he had pawed her. He refused to regret for one second what he had done, but he was not looking forward to the coming collision. Lucien Knight could dissect a person with his steel trap of a mind, and his twin, Damien, the war hero, was nothing short of bloody terrifying. He had heard there were a few other brothers, but he had not met them, nor did he care to, under the circumstances.

Gazing at her from across the rocking coach’s dark interior, he caught a brief glimpse of her profile as they passed through a shaft of moonlight streaming in between two tall buildings; then they were plunged in darkness and shadows again as the coach rattled on. The horses’ clip-clopping hoofbeats and the heavy grinding of the wheels did little to ease the charged silence between them. It was beginning to stretch his nerves thin.

“Someday you’ll thank me for this,” he informed her, unable to stand it anymore.

“It won’t work. I’ll only run away again.”

“I’ll be sure to warn Lucien you said so.”

She turned to him, the dim glow from a streetlamp giving him the barest glimpse of her face. “You have no right to do this to me. Why must you crush my will with your own?”

“Because I’m right, and you’re wrong. I am doing this for your own good.”

“Oh, you men,” she whispered bitterly. “You roll women under your wheels like great millstones grinding wheat. I shall never forgive you for this.”

“Well, it hardly matters, dear.” Insolently, he lit a cheroot to distract himself from the guilt. “It’s not as though we move in the same circles.”

“Hardly.” She fell silent for a moment. “So, that is all, then. It’s over. Now I shall have to marry Lord Griffith.”

“Is he so bad?”

She gave him a lost look that pricked at Blade’s feeble conscience.

“If you don’t want him, you must tell your family flat-out,” he said hotly.

“You don’t understand. Robert won’t listen—”

“Make him listen! Stand up for yourself, girl.”

“You don’t know very much about dukes, do you?”

He could not help but smile slightly at her quelling tone. “No, but I do know that your brothers would do anything for you, and that you can’t just run away from your problems.”

“You did.”

“It’s different with me.”

“Because you’re a man?”

“Because I had no choice. My father would have eventually ended up killing me if I had stayed.”

She stared at him for a moment in the darkness, then looked away.

They were silent just long enough for Blade to begin regretting his admission. He shifted self-consciously in his seat, crossing his ankle over the opposite knee. His injured side hurt.

“What about my things? You know I cannot do without my pretty baubles and material comforts,” she said in cool, cutting irony. “I left my traveling trunks at the inn.”

“Your brother can send for them.”

“How do you know Lucien, anyway?”

“It’s of no consequence.”

“Ah, but, of course. It would no doubt tax my poor female brain too much to be told the truth. It’s so good of you men to be always protecting me. Fortunately, I’m able to figure things out for myself. Lucien pays you for information about the criminal world, no?” In the darkness, he could just make out the sparks of derision in her eyes; then she turned away and stared out the window again. “I daresay you will do anything for a few pieces of silver. How much do you think you’ll get for ruining my life?”

Already uneasy with his confession about his father’s violence, he went on the defensive, losing patience. “I am not ruining your life, you daft chit. I am saving your neck.”

“You are not. I know why you’re doing this. Because you’re afraid of my brothers—”

“I’m not afraid of anyone,” he warned.

“They don’t have to know,” she said tautly. “You can still let me go.”

“Sorry, can’t do that.”

“Sorry? You will be. If I tell my brothers what you did to me—”

“You mean what you begged me to do to you?”

“You’re life won’t be worth a farthing.”

“Go ahead and tell them.” He sat back and gave her a flat look. “They’ll put you in a bloody convent.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you ever stop swearing?”

He smiled and blew smoke gently at her from his cheroot. She waved it away with an indignant cough and opened the window by its strap, then looked askance at him with a crafty gleam coming into her eyes. He watched her warily as she got up, crossed the small space of the coach, and slid into the seat beside him. He went very still as she laid her hand on his leg, but his pulse quickened at her touch.

“Billy,” she cajoled prettily, walking her gloved fingers up his thigh, “you’ll let me go if I pleasure you, as you did me, won’t you?”

He lifted his eyebrow. “You really
do
want to go to France.”

“Show me how.” With a wild, vixenish smile, she took him off guard with a warm caress all the way up to his still-aching cock. He flinched with need, but somehow found the strength to pluck her hand off his groin.

“You little hussy,” he said pleasantly.

“Come, you need it,” she whispered.

“There’s always Carlotta.”

“Ugh!” Cursing him under her breath in French, she flounced back to her seat with a huff, folded her arms across her chest, and glared at him.

He grinned, his cheroot clamped between his teeth. There was another embattled silence as the coach carried them into Lucien’s elegant neighborhood. In moments they would reach his handsomely appointed townhouse in Upper Brooke Street.

“Well,” she said, “you learned my real name. I think it’s only fair you tell me yours.”

He looked at her without comment.

“No one is really called ‘Billy Blade.' What is your real name? Is it William?”

He didn’t answer.

“Will. William. Willy.”

“Do you ever shut up?”

“Yes, William,” she taunted. Baby sister of her clan, she had obviously perfected her skills for annoying a male on her army of elder brothers.

He grumbled about her under his breath, then looked away as the hackney coach turned into Upper Brooke Street. In moments, he would hand her over and would probably never see her again. He glanced over and found her studying him. They stared at each other as the coach rolled to a halt in front of her brother’s house.

“Blade, please,” she whispered.

“Don’t,” he muttered brusquely, weakened by the frantic distress in her big, dark eyes. At once, he shoved open the door and jumped out of the carriage. “Mind ‘er, Jimmy. Don’t let her run off,” he ordered the driver as he shut the carriage door behind him. He braced himself to face her brother as he strode toward the entrance.

All sophisticated understatement, much like its owner, Lord Lucien Knight’s town house had a flat front with small wrought-iron balconies off the upper windows. Brass lanterns burned on either side of the elaborately carved door. In an upper window, where light beamed through the shade, he could see the slim silhouette of Lucien’s young wife brushing her long hair. Reaching the front door, he knocked loudly, then waited. He could feel Jacinda watching him from the coach. An elderly butler answered the door. He asked for Lord Lucien.

“Tell him it’s Blade.”

The thin old fellow gave him a guarded look and closed the door in his face. Again, he waited and smoked in restless silence, hooking his thumb idly in the waistband of his trousers. A few minutes later, the door opened again, and a tall, black-haired man stood in the doorway.

“Blade?” Lord Lucien Knight stepped out of his house, pulling the door closed silently behind him. Though his cravat hung untied around his neck, he was dressed in formal black and white, as though he had just come back from the same ball his sister had fled.

Blade suddenly wondered if anyone had even realized yet that Jacinda was missing. Maybe she had guessed correctly when she had said that her note might not yet have been found.

“What’s afoot?” Lucien asked, his silvery eyes glowing keenly in the moonlight.

“I found something of yours. Thought you might like to have it back.”

Lucien regarded him curiously. Blade nodded toward the coach, then told him everything that had happened. Well—not quite everything. He wasn’t suicidal.

“Good God! Is she hurt?”

“Only her pride,” Blade muttered, but Lucien was already striding toward the carriage.

“Jas?” He hauled open the carriage door as Blade came sauntering up behind him. “Sweeting, are you all right?”

“Yes, Lucien, I am perfectly well,” she drawled in a bored, long-suffering voice from inside the coach.

Reassured by her insolent tone, anger flooded Lucien’s aquiline face. “Perdition, girl, have you lost your mind? Get into the house this instant! You have some explaining to do!”

Glowering, the young beauty emerged from the shadows inside the vehicle, thrust her satchel into Lucien’s hands, then hopped out of the coach with an air of bristling defiance.

“And no temper tantrums,” her brother warned. “If you wake the baby, I’ll throttle you.”

Without a word, Jacinda took her bag back from him and turned to Blade, regarding him in silence for one final, excruciating moment with a look of bitter regret. She needed no words to express her disgust; her slight shaking of her head said it all. Shrugging her satchel up higher onto her shoulder, she walked into the house and closed the door behind her without looking back.

“What a piece of work!” Lucien exploded when she had shut the door, but Blade could only stand there feeling like an utter Judas.

“Ah, I had a feeling something like this was coming, but I didn’t think she’d really do it. I don’t know what we’ll do with her. The sooner she’s safely married off, the better—it is her second Season.”

Blade hesitated, knowing it was none of his business—nor did he really care—but he had to say something to try to help her. “Whoever it is you want her to marry,” he blurted out, “she really hates the notion.”

“She told you that?”

He nodded. “Who is the chap, and what’s wrong with him?” he asked cautiously.

“Wrong with him? Nothing. He’s the marquess of Griffith—only one of the ton’s most brilliant catches. He grew up with us in the North Country. She’s known him all her life. His wife died two years ago in childbirth, and we all think it’s time he rejoined the land of the living. They’d be good for each other.”

Blade stared at him in confusion. “He’s not an old wigsby?”

Lucien laughed. “Is that what she told you?”

Blade swiftly reviewed their conversation and shook his head as he realized. “It’s what she let me assume.”

Lucien gave him a wan smile. “She’s devious like that.” He sighed. “Who can fathom the mind of a woman? And that one’s as mad as her mother.”

Blade looked away uneasily, beginning to wonder all at once if he had done the wrong thing by bringing her back. She had confided in him; he had told her he would listen. But had he?

With a sigh, Lucien turned to him and extended his hand. “Thank you for bringing her back safely, Blade.” He shook his hand firmly. “God knows, anything might have happened to her out there. I owe you, truly. If there is anything I can do, you have but to name it.”

“It was nothing,” he said gruffly, remembering her icy taunting about his getting a reward for this. He turned to leave, his mood gone surly, then stopped himself halfway across the pavement. He rolled his eyes in self-disgust and turned around again.

“Lucien.”

“Yes?” The man paused, reaching for the doorknob.

He braced himself. “I kissed her, all right?”

Lucien’s eyes narrowed. “
What? ”

“I didn’t know she was your sister! She refused to tell me her name until after I had already done it.”

The ex-spy held him in a grim stare. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Why the hell do you think? Because you’d find out anyway. And… because I want you to know, it wasn’t her fault. It was all my doing.”

He waited for a charge, a punch, possibly a bullet.

“Your fault?” Lucien echoed, sizing him up.

“Entirely.”

Both men knew it was a lie, the best kind—a chivalrous one.

“Well, I should say,” Lucien sputtered, “you’re damned right it was your fault!”

“That’s right, and I apologize.” Blade regarded him with a stare as deliberately obtuse as that of an ox.

Lucien studied him for a long moment in his piercing way. “Do not attempt to see her again, Rackford— at least, not until you are prepared to return to the life you left. She is the daughter of a duke.”