Lady of Desire (15 page)

“It’s all right—I don’t mind—it’ll only take a moment.” Blushing profusely, Lizzie extricated her hand from Alec’s light but possessive hold and hurried off to do his bidding.

Jacinda folded her arms across her chest, suddenly disliking the idea of Alec and Lizzie under the same roof together, but she said nothing. Lizzie had been in love with the scoundrel since she was nine years old, though she claimed to have long since outgrown her infatuation. Jacinda hoped so, for as much as she loved her rakish brother, everyone knew that Alec collected ladies’ hearts the way Lord Petersham collected snuffboxes. As much as she would have loved for Lizzie to become her true sister through marriage, she knew that Alec would only smash Lizzie’s gentle heart into smithereens.

“Jacinda, I would speak with you privately,” Robert ordered.

“Of course,” she murmured, then followed him out into the hallway.

He closed the door and turned to her. “Bel has persuaded Miss Hood not to resign—though I am tempted to dismiss her for failing to detect and prevent your foolish attempt to leave us. In the meanwhile, I have settled matters with Lord Griffith. The wedding’s off.”

“Is he angry at me?”

“No.”

“Are you, Robert?”

He just sighed and shook his head at her.

“I’m sorry. I truly am.”

“I know.” He gathered her into a fatherly embrace. “It’s just that you worry me so, little one. The way you enslave your admirers… How can I help but fear disaster? It’s like the time I came out into the hallway and saw Morley teetering atop the staircase. I never moved so fast in my life—”

“I am not a two-year-old.”

“Forgive me if a part of me wishes you still were. It was a good deal easier keeping track of you then. In any case, to answer your question, no, I’m not angry at you, but I am terribly concerned.” He grasped her shoulders gently and held her at arm’s length, staring soberly into her eyes. “I am sending you down to the country—”

“Robert, but the Season’s just started!”

“Ah, ah, you’ve brought it on yourself,” he chided. “You will spend the rest of April at Hawkscliffe Hall, where you will use the peace and quiet of the country to contemplate the error of your ways.”

She groaned.

“You may return to Town for the Devonshire ball on the night of Princess Charlotte’s wedding. I know how much you have been looking forward to that.”

“May I bring Lizzie with me, at least?” she asked in despondency as he shepherded her back into the drawing room.

“Yes, if she wishes to go.”

But when Jacinda asked her friend a few minutes later to accompany her to the country, Alec interrupted before Lizzie could reply. “Oh, no, you don’t. I need Lizzie here to take care of me.”

Jacinda scoffed at him, taking her friend by the arm. “Alec, I am sure Lizzie has got better things to do than play nursemaid to you.”

“No, she hasn’t,” Alec said jauntily. “Do you, Bits?”

Lizzie turned to her in dismay, as though the suggestion of coddling Alec for the next few weeks sounded perfectly acceptable to her.

“Lizzie!” Jacinda cried, seeing her friend’s hesitation. “I shall perish of boredom up there by myself!”

“Nonsense. You’ll have Miss Hood,” Alec said slyly. “It is a punishment, after all, Jas, not a holiday. Besides, don’t you think you’re being a wee bit selfish? Why must Bits miss out on the Season when it was your own stupid stunt?”

“Lizzie doesn’t care about the Season and as for my “stupid stunt,” at least I didn’t break my ankle on some addlepated wager. You just want her here to fetch and carry for you, as if she were a spaniel—“

“You little diva! You only want her to follow you around like your own personal audience—”

“Please, stop it, both of you!” Lizzie exclaimed, looking from one to the other. “I do not wish to go to the country right now. I really should stay here to help Alec—”

“ You’re choosing him over me? ” Jacinda demanded.

“Don’t you remember how dreadful my hay fever is in spring? The last thing I want is to go traipsing through the fields after you and your hunting dogs, sneezing my head off.”

“You tell her, lass!” Alec said, gloating in his chair behind her.

“Besides,” Lizzie added, a rare tinge of anger pinking her cheeks. “He is right. It is
your
punishment. I don’t see why I should go just to make it pleasant for you. After all, you didn’t trouble yourself about leaving
me
behind when you set out for France. Besides, Lord Alec needs me.” She laid her hand on his shoulder. “Her Grace and the servants cannot look after him all by themselves.”

Alec’s hand closed gently atop Lizzie’s.

Jacinda stared at them, taken aback, then murmured, “As you wish.” But she looked into her friend’s eyes, communicating a silent warning to be careful with him.

“Come, my lady,” Miss Hood said, rising from her chair. She draped her knitting basket primly over her forearm and crossed the room to her. “We must pack your things for the country. We’ll leave bright and early.”

Sure enough, the traveling chariot and the entourage of servants accompanying her to Hawkscliffe Hall were ready to go by seven the next morning. Lizzie still did not change her mind, but was all the more firmly determined, it seemed, to seize this one chance to spend time alone with her dream man. Jacinda bid her family good-bye.

The journey from London to the Cumberland wilds around Hawkscliffe Hall, her family’s ancestral castle, was a four-day affair, but this time, it felt twice as long, confined inside the close quarters of the traveling chariot with her affronted governess. Miss Hood was so terse, sharp, and out of charity with her errant charge that Jacinda’s maid, Ann, finally took to riding on the roof seat for long spells to escape the tension inside the coach. As their trek progressed through the second day, however, Jacinda slowly became aware of just how much meeting Billy Blade had changed her.

She had made the journey up the Great North Road from London countless times, but only on this occasion was she truly struck by the suffering and hardship she saw throughout the realm. It was just as he had described it. They passed the lifeless, half-burned hulls of cotton mills, still and silent; heroes of Waterloo begging, crippled and drunken, in the towns. When they stopped for the night in York, she heard a fiery peasant rabble-rouser shouting to a crowd in the square about the destruction of their livelihoods by the new machines that were putting people out of work. She wanted to stay to listen to him, but Miss Hood fetched her briskly into the hotel.

And during the nights, she discovered that it was not only a greater awareness of the world that Blade had awakened in her. She lay in her hotel bed burning with the unwanted memory of his mouth on hers, his hands on her breasts. When she closed her eyes, she could still see in vivid detail the fascinating tattoos on his skin, and in her dreams, she traced each one with her lips and fingertips.

Oh, she must try harder to ponder the error of her ways! she thought, struggling against her desire for that bold, ill-mannered rogue. For away from Robert’s scrutiny, she could admit that she truly did not know what would become of her. Blade had proved to her beyond any doubt that her mother’s disastrous wantonness flowed in her veins. She was a very frail vessel, indeed, eager for a man’s caresses.

Or maybe it was only Billy Blade who had that effect on her. Somehow, that possibility was worse.

As another night passed in empty wanting, she thought in despair of the difference in their stations and the impossibility of ever possessing him. Even if he were a prince, and eligible, she argued with herself, he had already proved himself every ounce as domineering as her brothers, and that was exactly what she did not want. The thought helped to bring her back to her senses, along with remembering the coldness that had come into his eyes when she had dealt him the cut direct at Hyde Park.

Forget him.

Whatever thread of connection had existed between them that night in his room, in his bed, she had severed it that day in the park, and that, she supposed, was for the best.

A week later, Blade was finishing a cheroot and sharpening his knife for his night’s work. His decision that day coming back from Hyde Park had spawned a crime spree throughout the luxurious neighborhoods of Mayfair and St. James’s. Hearing someone coming down the hallway, he glanced warily at his closed chamber door, then quickly hid Jacinda’s diamond necklace in his boot.

He had not yet pawned her jewels, nor did he dare hide them around here, sharing the house, as he did, with a large band of accomplished thieves. Though he told himself he might keep them just to shove them down her lovely throat someday, the sorry truth was he did not want to give them up because they were his one remaining connection to Lady Jacinda. Who could say? Maybe they would bring him good luck.

A knock sounded just then.

“Aye,” he called.

The door opened, and Nate popped his curly head in. “Almost time to go.”

“Jimmy got the carriage ready?”

“Nearly.” Nate sauntered in and closed the door behind him. He rubbed his hands together as though to warm them, then cracked his knuckles.

His cheroot dangling from the corner of his lips, Blade slowly finished sharpening his favorite knife.

“Seen little Eddie today?” Nate asked, leaning in the window.

“No.”

“Nobody seems to have seen him around the past few days.”

“Maybe he fell down a sewer,” Blade drawled.

“You’re not worried?”

“Little blighter’s got nine lives. He’s probably still cross at me for making him give back all the gold he stole from that rich girl. He’ll be back.”

Nate shrugged and studied the wall for a moment.

“What’s the matter?” Blade asked him.

Nate turned to him with a frown. He scratched his head. “I’m thinkin‘ we should call off the job tonight.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. Somethin‘ don’t feel right.”

Blade scoffed.

“I mean it, man,” Nate said. “We’ve hit six houses in four nights. We’re gettin‘ a bit reckless, don’t you think? Maybe it’s too much.”

“Aw, don’t whine at me, Nate. If you need a night off, get Andrews or Mikey to stand in for you.”

“It’s not that! I can pull my weight as well as any man.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t know.” Nate shook his head. “There’s somethin‘ in the air. Can’t put my finger on it.”

Blade snorted and climbed to his feet, flicking his spent cheroot into the fireplace.

“Doesn’t it strike you that O’Dell has been too bloody quiet lately?” Nate pursued.

“No wonder. He can’t see. I damned near knocked his eye out last time we met.” Blade efficiently loaded his pistols, then pulled on his black leather coat and gave Nate a clap on the shoulder, steering him affectionately toward the door by the scruff of his neck. “Go tell the ladies it’s time for the dance.”

“You’re a proper bastard,” he muttered, pausing as he went out, “but they’d follow you through hell, and so would I.”

Blade’s raffish smile sobered. “I know it. Thanks, Nate.”

“Just bring us back alive, eh?”

“I always do,” he retorted as Nate went off down the hallway to fetch the others.

A short while later on a cobbled side street off of stately Portman Square, five black-clad figures slid out of the passing hackney and glided through the darkness at a stealthy run, leaping up to scale the garden wall, dropping down lightly upon the spongy grass of the garden.

With practiced efficiency they advanced toward the back entrance of the vast, empty, opulent town house, one pair darting ahead, then positioning themselves to provide cover for the next two, who passed them as they glided in even closer. Reaching the flagged veranda, they bounded silently over the stone balustrade. The weather, foggy and wet, made for sloppy work, but the sound of the rain muffled any slight noise they made.

Blade and Nate went for the door, Nate giving him cover as Blade drew the ‘dabbs’ from inside his coat, crouched down, and began the delicate business of picking the door’s three locks, his hands steady. Meanwhile, Sarge and Flaherty crept to the windows with Andrews, the most promising of the younger lads. The three peered inside. Seeing no one within, they signaled Blade, who had just sprung the last lock.

His heart pounded with the thrill of the game, but his breathing was even and relaxed behind the blue neckerchief tied around the lower half of his face. He pushed up to his feet, laid one hand on the door, and gently turned the knob. The others waited, poised to enter, as he inched the door open. He listened for sounds of life within but heard nothing.

His information, as always, was accurate. Young Miss Daphne Taylor had been staying with her cousins until now, he had learned. Her parents, the Viscount and Viscountess Erhard, had been delayed by their younger children, who had been taken with the flu, but they were due to arrive in Town in a fortnight. The servants were to begin preparing the house for their return this week, but for now the grand house stood empty.

He threw a taut nod to his men and slipped inside. Hardened professionals all, they knew their exit route in advance; each man knew the precise moment that Jimmy would drive past the other way in the hackney in which he had dropped them off. They even had a fair idea of the layout of the house, having done this countless times before. They expected to be in and out in twenty minutes. There was no need to take undue chances by lingering. Once over the threshold, they stole through the house by the same sly method.

Blade had told them in advance that his goal was the vault, but as they searched the house, the other four made a thorough sweep of each room they came to, taking whatever of value they could find, tossing it into their sacks—silver candlesticks, fancy snuffboxes, objects d’art from the mantelpieces. Singleminded in his focus on the vault, Blade waited for them in the hallway. Watching them, however, he found himself eyeing the holland-draped furniture that sat, ghostlike, in each darkened room.

God
, he thought,
it’s
as still as a tomb.

The hairs on his nape prickled slightly in man’s most ancient warning signal of danger, but he could see no source of threat. He glanced behind him and ahead down the hallway, suddenly beginning to dislike this crack intensely. He couldn’t say what was wrong. But it was too easy.