Never a Gentleman (22 page)

“Well, at least you have that much sense,” Harper muttered.

“Hush, Harps,” Grace chastised as the little man gave her a leg up. “How was Diccan to know that I could clean up? I thank
you, Diccan. I have to admit that I am feeling unpardonably smug. I’ll never be Kate, but at least I no longer look like a
paid mourner. Now, then,” she hurried on, gathering her reins, “Where shall we go? I’d rather not return to the park. Epona
needs to stretch her legs.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Diccan turned them into the street, the indomitable Harper at their backs. “Besides, I’d be fighting
off every Hyde Park soldier within a mile just to talk to you.”

Even Grace’s blushes seemed softer, her carriage somehow more ladylike. Diccan kept getting distracted by the sight of her
hands on the reins. She had the perfect feel for her horse’s mouth, a gentle touch that certainly translated well on a man’s
skin.

He was beset by memory again, this time of the moment he’d collapsed onto her, panting and spent from an astonishingly hard
climax. She had wrapped her arms around him, stroking his spine with fingers he now realized were long and elegant, with just
enough callus to intrigue. He felt a small
frisson
snake down that same area, and wondered what those fingers would feel like stroking his cock.

Beneath him, Gadzooks kicked out at a passing cart, calling him to account. Squeezing with his knees, he guided him away.
He hoped like hell he hadn’t betrayed himself.

He heard a suspicious snort from behind him and had a
feeling it wasn’t from Harper’s gelding. He was definitely going to have to watch himself around the Irishman.

“If you’ll be patient,” he told Grace, “we’ll head out toward Kensington, where we can have the road to ourselves.”
And where he could more easily spot a shadow
.

“That sounds perfect,” she said, with a bright smile.

Just then a beer dray cut them off, sending Grace’s horse rearing and spinning in a circle. Epona whinnied. Grace laughed
out loud. Diccan didn’t realize he’d reached out, ready to intervene, until Grace neatly settled her horse and received an
apology from the carter, who tipped his hat.

“Sure, there’s no need to hold my girl’s hand,” Harper said quietly from behind him. “Taught her myself afore she could climb
steps, then, didn’t I?”

Diccan turned around to see that fierce, protective light in the ex-sergeant’s eyes. “Were you the one who taught her how
to ride a camel?”

That earned him a bark of laughter. “Saints praise us, no. Didn’t she do that all on her own, the little witch? Not even four
when I lost her in the bazaar and found her up there chattering away with the driver, like he was a long-lost cousin and all.”
He shook his head. “Faith, and wasn’t I always pullin’ her outa one scrape or another, so? Truth be told, it’s a relief to
have some help.”

Diccan had a wonderful time that afternoon. He and Grace rode hell-bent cross country, jumping fences and hedgerows, their
laughter floating away on the wind as they tested the mettle of their horses. Gadzooks won, of course. But Diccan couldn’t
discount the Andalusian. She certainly held her own. So, he admitted, to himself, did her rider. The gray ghost he had met
in Brussels had transformed
into a red-blooded woman, and he thought that maybe he wouldn’t mind this marriage so much after all.

His temper improved even more when he returned back to the Pulteney to find one of his operatives waiting with Babs in his
bedroom.

“This is Sarah.” Babs introduced the girl, a round-faced, round-bodied maid with lank yellow hair and sturdy arms. “She’s
been working for Viscount Bentley.”

Diccan invited them both to sit, and adjured Biddle to make sure Grace was kept busy.

“The Bentley funeral was yesterday, wasn’t it?” he asked.

The girl bobbed her head. “Yessir. Both the master and the son. Were a lot o’ people.”

Diccan nodded. The word had been put about that Bentley had been attacked down on the wharves when he went to collect the
body of his son, who had died in a duel on the Continent.

“What can you tell me, Sarah?”

“My lord’s lawyer, Mr. Melvin, spent yesterday at the house with a Mr. Geoffrey Smythe, goin’ through the late master’s things.
Kept sayin’ that they had to make sure Bentley didn’t ’ave the verse after all. Said it were Bentley’s responsibility and
it were missin’.”

His heart picked up a bit. “A verse? Like poetry?”

“Don’t know, sir. Don’t think they found it, neither. Fair tore my lord’s office apart, secret-like.”

Diccan considered what she’d said. “Anything else?”

“Yessir. Said that time was runnin’ out. That things were getting desperate. Said somethin’ about the Duke o’ Wellington,
but I couldn’t catch it. I had to hide so’s they didn’t find me.”

“You did an excellent job, Sarah. You might have just saved the Duke’s life.”

The girl bobbed her head, her face red as a brick. “I hope so, sir.”

“Babs,” he said turning to her, “I don’t suppose you’d like to work for a lawyer.”

“No, thank you,” she said with a secret smile. “I’m keeping an eye on your wife.”

“Is the house still being watched?”

She nodded. “The house. You. And a government man is watching the watchers.”

“Well, don’t leave her alone. I know we expect a threat first, but I don’t want to take chances.”

Progress
, he thought as he sat down at his desk to scribble a note to Drake. New players. A reference to a verse, which Diccan’s sixth
sense told him was the object Evenham had told him the Lions were waiting for. A possible way into the Bentley home for a
fresh search.

Maybe this could be the way to break the case. Maybe it would mean that he could be excused from seeking the Lions’ attention.
Maybe, just maybe, he could actually have the time to get to know his wife. He thought of their ride today and hoped so. It
had only been an hour, and he was already anxious to match her skills again, to make her laugh so he could see that dimple.

Long experience, though, told him not to count on it.

For Grace, that day was a harbinger for the next sennight. She began each day with a bruising ride and ended with a quiet
dinner in their parlor. During the intervening hours, Diccan disappeared into his clubs, and she either to Kate’s
for education and house-searching, or the Army Hospital to care for her men. Once her evening dresses were ready, Diccan even
accompanied her and Kate to a few functions, not disappearing into the card room until he’d spent at least one dance by her
side.

He had even listened to her when she told him she’d seen that same man watching the hotel again. She told him she trusted
him when he said he was taking care of it; actually, she did.

She began, tentatively, to hope. The more time she spent with Diccan, the more she liked him. The more she wanted to know
about him. Diccan seemed interested in her as well. He seemed to relish their rides together. Bolstered by her new, more colorful
wardrobe, Grace felt herself beginning to enjoy her role as wife and companion. She saw hints that Diccan was doing the same
as a husband, and tried her best to patiently abide until he felt comfortable enough to return to her bed.

It was a difficult wait. Her body rejoiced each time he lifted her onto Epona, his strong hands sure on her waist, his eyes
twinkling. She went weak at the brief brush of his hand against hers as he helped her into her chair or down the stairs. She
felt her heart thud and her blood heat when she saw his eyes unexpectedly darken when they met hers, when she saw his nostrils
flare, just a little, like a stallion scenting a mare. She began to look for it, to wish she knew how to incite it. She wanted
him to touch her. She wanted him to do all those amazing things he had done to her before. She wanted to feel his hands on
her breasts, his breath against her throat, his moan against her mouth. She wanted to find out if she truly had felt that
full, if the heat of him inside her had truly splintered into stars.

But he remained the perfect, languidly polite gentleman, and she didn’t know how to demand more. So she did what she did best.
She worked hard on being what he needed, and she began to hope that it would be enough.

Her first triumph was finding the perfect house. Situated on Clarges Street around the corner from Kate’s house on Curzon,
it was a simple white townhouse with wrought iron balconies, tall double-hung windows, and fanlighted doorway. When she showed
Diccan through the high-ceilinged, clean rooms, she felt a real sense of pride. Here would be her salon, she said, and here
the morning room and here, with its bookcases and French doors onto the back garden, Diccan’s office.

“It will be your private space,” she promised, a hand on his arm. “I won’t even let the maids in.”

He smiled at her. “No one would believe I could be this domesticated,” he said. “Robert swore I’d spend the rest of my life
in a hotel.”

It was her one regret, that no matter what, she couldn’t seem to entice Diccan to open up more about his childhood, his family,
his hopes and disappointments and dreams. He never revealed more then the most superficial information. Soon, she kept hoping.
When he felt more comfortable with her.

He finally took her to her first grand ball, given by Lady Castlereagh, who had taken a young Grace under her wing in Ireland
when Grace’s father had supported Lord Castlereagh, then Lord Lieutenant.

“Well, Mr. Hilliard,” the grande dame announced, taking Grace’s hand. “You have done better for yourself than I’d expected.
If anyone can keep you in check, I believe it is Grace.”

Diccan, quite on his mettle, bowed low. “You have given her a thankless job, ma’am.”

Lady Castlereagh’s smile was knowing. “So I have, Hilliard. I’ll see you both at Almack’s?”

From that moment on, even Grace’s limp failed to constrain her. She had not disgraced Diccan, here where it was most important.
She was on his arm, and she was dressed in the most beautiful gown she had ever owned, a V-necked robe of bronze lutestring
and spangled gauze she felt displayed her shoulders well. For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel like an inconvenient
accessory.

It helped that her Grenadiers made a showing, there to support her when Diccan eventually wandered off to the card room. It
helped even more that Kate and Lady Bea had been so generous in their lessons. For the first time in her life, Grace felt
almost elegant, and people seemed to respond. She felt a new purpose fill her. She
could
be the wife Diccan needed. Now all she needed to do was be the wife he wanted. Because as hard as she tried, she couldn’t
delude herself. She was falling in love.

Standing at the edge of the ballroom, watching Grace laugh with her Grenadiers, Diccan battled a growing sense of frustration.
It had been eight days, and nothing had happened. No one had approached him, or threatened him, or offered him an opportunity
to secure his future. Thornton was a toad, Smythe was a lizard, and their friends were worthless. And yet, while his wife
devoted her hours to injured soldiers and furniture warehouses, he was forced to waste his at cockfights, gaming hells, and
whorehouses.
She was helping form charitable groups, and he diced with strangers.

He was unsettled by the fact that he’d underestimated the effect his wife would have on him. More and more he found himself
wanting to see what she was doing, hear what she thought of something. He wanted her reflections on the case, when he knew
he had no right to drag her into it.

The best he could do was step aside and let her spread her wings. Because Grace Fairchild wasn’t quite the ugly duckling everyone—including
him—had assumed her to be. She was not pretty. She never would be. But she was growing into her new role, until no one really
noticed her lurching gait or unseemly height. She was still too pale, too gawky, often too quiet. But once a person saw her
on horseback, it didn’t matter. Once they got to know her, they couldn’t help but respond to her quiet decency and dry wit,
just as he found himself doing.

What worried him the most was that he was losing distance. How could he convince anyone that he didn’t care for her when all
he wanted to do was be with her? When had his hands begun to itch for the feel of her hair and the slope of her hip? When
had he decided that she was more interesting than his work? How could he protect her from his enemies if he couldn’t even
protect her from himself?

He made his biggest mistake when he found himself kissing her. Mostly at the edge of dance floors where it would be commented
on that Hilliard was making the best of a bad situation. Once in the morning room of their new home as he helped her pick
out wallpaper. Quick, impersonal pecks that never satisfied him.

Then, that very morning, he’d come perilously close to disaster. They were out by Richmond, where the gleaming
Thames spun out across the rolling green fields like a carelessly tossed ribbon. Harper had yet to catch up to them, and Grace
was laughing with delight at her filly’s success in catching Gadzooks. As for Gadzooks, he was nuzzling Epona like a callow
boy with his first love.

Maybe that was Diccan’s inspiration. He didn’t know. He just knew that as he lifted Grace off Epona, he let her slide down
his body until their mouths met in an open-mouthed kiss.

He felt her abruptly still, her hands frozen on his shoulders. He could smell dust on her and horse, the faint tang of honest
sweat, the smoke of exotic flowers. This time when his cock signaled interest, he didn’t object. He savored the slow tide
of engorgement as his rod sought the soft haven of Grace’s belly. He heard the hum of arousal in his blood and felt it pulse
in his throat. He tasted sunshine and excitement on her lips and probed for entrance with his tongue.

He could come to enjoy this, he thought, as she abruptly softened. Opened. Invited. Hands opening and closing against his
shoulders, like a cat kneading a throw, she arched to meet him. Heat-to-heat, bodies fitting together more perfectly than
he’d ever known. He could even look forward to holding her so that her breasts were flattened against his chest, her toes
on the ground, her head tilted to fit more fully against him. Cooperating, initiating, finally finding the courage to send
her own tongue out to mate with his, slick and hot and urgent. Welcoming him, as if directing him home.