My Surrender (16 page)

And while Miss Nash stayed on until the wee, wee hour and danced, tongues began to wag, whispers following her as closely as her shadow.

“She all but declared he could not keep her in a style she wanted.”

“Just as she all but declared that she was looking for someone who could.”

“I always thought her too forward.”

“But this forward? I know her sister, the marchioness of Cottrell. She will be devastated.”

“Probably not. She would know to expect such a thing. Unlike my poor naïve son, Jeff.”

“Or my innocent nephew Carl.”

“And my unsuspecting husband.”

Culholland Square, Mayfair
August 3, 1806

W
AITING WAS THE HARDEST PART,
Charlotte decided four days later as she listlessly threaded another skein of blue silk through the eye of a needle. She had studied the blueprints of St. Lyon’s castle renovations for so many hours she could have made copies to scale from memory. She knew to within a foot where every window and every servants’ hall led, which closets were deep enough to hide in, which doors led to stairwells and which panels hid priests’ holes. After that…she filled the hours.

She was sick of needlework, tired of reading, fed up with her own company and the only other person she cared to talk to was ensconced in some Bedford Square apartment putting on a fine show as her cast-off lover—or so Ginny informed her. He was drinking, gaming, and wenching—at least she assumed he was wenching—while she embroidered
pillow shams
!

It wasn’t fair. Oh, she had invitations. Invitations to go on carriage rides in the country, take the night air at public pleasure gardens, or dine tête-à-tête with a number of wealthy gentlemen. She was so bored she’d almost accepted the last such invitation she’d received from a rising politician. At least the conversation might prove interesting. But then the conversation was unlikely to be about politics, wasn’t it?

So she sat. And played whist with Ginny during the courtesan’s daily visit, and tapped her fingers as she stared out her window at the little square across the road and thought about Dand. And wanted to be with Dand. And practiced a few of his more colorful words.

She took a deep breath. This was getting her nowhere. She must think of other things. For instance, by now St. Lyon would have received Ginny’s letter and presumably answered it. What if he didn’t take the bait? No. She refused to believe it. She would not allow herself to think along such disastrous lines.

So, since she didn’t allow herself to dwell on Dand and his despicable dalliances, and she dare not consider the unimaginable—that all she had done had been for naught—she was left scant little to think about other than…than…pillow shams.

Blowing out her cheeks, Charlotte set aside her embroidery and wandered disconsolately toward the candy box an admirer had sent her. Already half a dozen little gold tissue nests stood relieved of their almond paste creations. No wonder, she thought sardonically, so many of the soiled doves pointed out to her at the opera houses were plump little pigeons.

She had just picked up a little marzipan rose when the door to the parlor burst open. Ginny stood framed within, balancing atop yet another elegantly wrought pair of crutches. Her pretty face was vivid with ill-suppressed excitement and she was waving a piece of paper like a flag at the king’s birthday.

“It’s come! Your invitation!” she breathed, clomping into the room, pivoting neatly on one crutch and with the other slamming the door shut. “I arrived at the same time as the messenger and took it upon myself to pay the postage. I know his hand, Charlotte. ’Tis from St. Lyon!”

She swung across the room, her crutches banging loudly against the floor, and thrust the letter at Charlotte. “Read!”

Charlotte took the paper and without bothering to find an opener, slipped her finger beneath the seal. Proud that her hand did not shake, she snapped the folded sheet open and read.

So that was it, then. She took a deep breath. Another.

“What does he say?” Ginny demanded. Wordlessly, Charlotte handed her the letter.

Ginny looked up, her expression a little amazed. “That’s it, then. We’ve done it, Charlotte. He’s sending his carriage for you tomorrow.”

“So soon?” Charlotte murmured.

“Well, my dear, it only proves his ardor. You ought to be flattered.”

“Yes,” she said. “I should be.” She squared her shoulders, as if physically assuming a burden, but when her gaze met Ginny’s it was lucid and uncompromising.

“Now, the hard part is done and the simple matter of finding the letter and replacing it with a fake remains,” she said. “Oh, and I suppose I shall have to make myself agreeable, too, in order to hold St. Lyon’s attention. And yet not so agreeable that he cannot bear to be apart from me for those hours I will need to search.”

She smiled—a new smile, harder and tighter. “I shall simply have to find some means of suppressing my colossal magnetism.”

Ginny was not having it. The courtesan knew Charlotte too well. Her dark eyes narrowed with pity. But pity is not what Charlotte needed now. She needed strength.

“As soon as you find that letter,” Ginny said, “you must contrive an excuse to leave immediately.”

“In the nick of time, you mean?” Charlotte could not help the dry cut to her retort. There likely would be no nick of time and they both knew it.

Ginny turned her head, chewing at her lower lip. “He’s…a considerate lover, Lottie,” she said in a low voice. “He is kind during…during intimacy.”

Kind?
the word caught Charlotte by the throat.

She didn’t want St. Lyon’s
kindness.
Regardless of what “kindness” St. Lyon showed her body, there could be no possible way in which he could become more “intimate” with her than Dand. She had spent weeks playing at being in love with Dand Ross, while falling in love with him in truth, refusing to think of another in his place, of another man touching her.

She knew every variation of the color in Dand’s eyes, from the warm amberine color of melted toffee to near black of burnt coffee. She knew every scar that etched his hands, the way his brows crooked up an instant before he smiled; the lazy way he moved; his careless grace; his idle strength, the purpose prowling beneath his lassitude.

She understood the keen intellect that hid beneath casual curiosity, the hard realist that held sway over the easygoing rogue. She knew the way he tasted. She knew the way he smelled. She had but to close her eyes and every sense she possessed conspired to construct his image in perfect detail.

How could she be more intimate with anyone? Only with the physical act of making love.

The answer fell upon her with terrible weight and with it a stunning realization.

Because she was still a virgin, St. Lyon would be able to tell she hadn’t been intimate with anyone.

The room was stuffy and overheated, but since the rain was driving against the window from the east, he had little choice but to keep it shut. Outside the night sky was black and dense and thick with the promise of a greater storm to come.

With an irritation he seldom felt, he yanked his shirt from his torso and tossed it to a chair and then lay down on the narrow bed that came with the apartment. He crossed his boots at the ankle and laced his fingers behind his head and contemplated a spider industriously weaving a web directly overhead. There was a portent in that spider’s machinations, he thought with a return of dark humor.

Had everything in the last six years been part of God’s plan to bring him to his knees?

Probably.

In spite of every effort, he’d been unable to extradite his life from being so tightly bound to Charlotte Nash’s. He smiled in the darkness. Damn the little hoyden, anyway. He had thought that by playing an accommodating scoundrel, he could keep a surreptitious eye on her while deftly keeping her out of the other threads that comprised the fabric of his life. It only made it worse. It only made her trust him. She had let herself relax with him, did not bother to put up defenses, to guard herself.

Dear God, if she knew the extent of the self-restraint with which he’d met her shattering little caresses; if she understood the physical pain he’d endured under the scourge of her familiarities, her kisses and sighs; the self-control he’d practiced in not responding fully to those innocent provocations—she wouldn’t have shared the same room with him, let alone the same house!

He didn’t just want her; he wanted her
entirely.
He closed his eyes tightly, his jaw muscles working in frustration and anger. He should have been able to eschew these entanglements, this desire, this—

Love,
he thought bitterly.

He didn’t have much time. The worst possible end to this farce would play out if he was caught on these shores by Ram—a disaster second only to the problem presented should Kit MacNeill find him here. He had to be away by the time both or either man returned to England and his sources told him that would be soon. And then…? Then he couldn’t come back until the final curtain was set to be drawn.

He would
not
be distracted by the thought of Charlotte waiting for an invitation from St. Lyon. The comte was a practical man. A wary man. Even if he did send for Charlotte, the odds were greatly in favor of his waiting to do so until after the auction of the letter. By then the impetus that forced her to his bed would be gone. But what if the comte—

No.
He had to leave. It was imperative. He could not stay and keep Charlotte from St. Lyon, no matter how much his heart insisted he do just that. There were things for which he had worked half his lifetime. People, perhaps hundreds of people, depended on the success of his mission and he would not forfeit their lives because he’d fallen in love with Charlotte Nash.

“Monsieur Rousse?” The maid who served the apartments he’d rented knocked at the door. “Message for you, sir.”

He supposed he should put on his shirt so as not to offend the girl, but he was hot and sticky and the girl had probably seen a great deal more interesting things in her short life than a man branded with a rose. He swung his legs over the bed, got up, and opened the door.

“Yes? The message?” he asked curtly.

The girl dropped the note into his outstretched palm, bobbing a quick curtsy and hurrying away, leaving him to retreat back into his room.

He wasn’t surprised by the arrival of a note. He was still collecting information in London from various sources, most of whom preferred the anonymity provided by a letter rather than risk exposure by seeking him out for a face-to-face interview. Still, the quality of the paper was better than his correspondents usually employed.

He broke open the seal and at once the elegant feminine hand leapt out at him, the signature discreet, with only a few flourishes, far less elaborate than would have expected from so extravagant an owner as Charlotte Nash.

“Please. Come tonight.”

Stuffing the tails of his shirt in his trousers, he took the stairs down to the front hall two at a time, snatching up his coat before plunging into the rain.

St. Bride’s Abbey
Spring 1799

“No one must know where you are going. None of the other lads, nor any of the monks. As far as they are concerned, you have decided you have had enough of the monastic life and are heading out to experience the fleshpots of Edinborough.” Father Tarkin paused before each of the young men standing straight-backed before him. He looked into each pair of eyes with a deep, probing stare. “No one will find any reason to doubt the story. The four of you lads have been living in each other’s pockets close to a decade.”

Kit MacNeill hesitated. “What of John Glass?”

“What of him?” Father Tarkin asked.

“He knows something is up. He’s been pestering Douglas with questions about where we go after matins and why Ram is so intent on perfecting his French accent.”

“And what have you told him, Douglas?” Father Tarkin turned his attention to the brown-haired young man at the end.

“I told him we’re planning to fly some evening, to turn our backs on the abbey and make a name for ourselves in the world.” Douglas grinned. He was excited, Dand could see, eager to undertake the mission that Father Tarkin, Brother Toussaint, and the mysterious visitor from France had formulated. “And that’s not far from the truth, is it?”

“Not if things go as I pray they do,” Father Tarkin said. “In which case no one will ever know who you are. Just like now.” His eyes touched upon and held Dand’s gaze for a telling instant that the other lads did not seem to notice.

He had taken the old wrecker’s advice to heart those many years ago when Father Tarkin had picked him up off the side of the road. It had been years before he’d admitted to the canny abbot the name of the family he’d been born into. Of course, by then it had hardly mattered. His immediate family was all dead, and those who would be interested in knowing his whereabouts would have been hard-pressed to find him. Added to which, there was no proof—none—that he was who he knew himself to be.

Except, he hadn’t forgotten. He’d never forgotten. He never would.

“I know who I am.” Beside him Douglas spoke with quiet assurance. “And I know these men beside me. I don’t need know their lineage to know their quality.”

Father Tarkin looked at him approvingly and gave a slight nod. “Well said, Douglas.”