Rogue's Reward (2 page)

The man colored and looked away. “No,” he mumbled. “No. We’ll leave now, then, and say nothing.”

Lee was left alone.

He tore open the note and scanned the contents before tearing it in pieces and casting them into the fire. Without hesitation he began to search the room. Several other documents joined the note in the flames. Satisfied that nothing else incriminating remained, Lee took out a gun-cleaning kit that he found in a closet and began to arrange the body as if there had been an accident.

He had barely finished when Walter Downe burst into the room. The blond head was still damp from the shower and his cravat was twisted.

“For God’s sake, Lee! Why did he do it?”

“Manton Barnes died rather than have that come out, sir. I think we might respect the peace of the dead, don’t you?”

Downe blushed. “Which is why you are rearranging his body?”

“He thought it was worth his fortune—and finally his life—for his family not to know about his little scandal. There’s no need at all for them to suspect as much.”

“Good God! The affair with Blanche Harrison? He was being blackmailed? Did he leave a note? Who forced him to such desperation?”

Lee looked about the room, making sure that he had covered up every hint of suicide.

“I don’t know. Had he told me, the blackmailer would not live to see another dawn. But he did give me a clue.”

“Which was?”

“Dear Mr. Downe, you are too full of questions. Why don’t you go and tell the Bow Street men that we have found our poor friend dead of an accident, there’s a good chap.”

Walter Downe bowed and left the room. Lee sat in a chair beside the body and waited. He had told his friend the truth. He had no idea of the blackmailer’s identity, but he would go down to Norfolk to find out. In the meantime the final sentence of poor Barnes’s note meant no sense at all.

“The cad is impossible to stop, Campbell,” the note read. “I am bled dry. Once he has his claws into you, it’s worse than the punishment of Prometheus. Even the Actons are involved—God! Ask the lady!”

* * *

Lady Eleanor Acton allowed her maid to unhook the fasteners at the back of her dress, then dismissed the girl for the night. She was alone in a shadowed bedroom of the Three Feathers, one of the better post-houses on the Norwich road. Her mother had a room just down the hall and their maids were to share a chamber at the back of the house.

She began to take down her hair, when her fingers brushed the bare skin at the back of her neck.

“Damnation,” she said aloud in the most unladylike manner. “I’ve lost my locket.”

She sat on the chair beside the bed and thought for a moment. It had been there at dinner, because Mama had commented that it looked very well and asked about it. Thus it must have slipped off somewhere between the private parlor where they had dined and her bedchamber. Richard and Helena had given it to her after that amazing Christmas at Acton Mead, and she realized with a sudden pang that it was the most precious thing that she owned.

It was impossible to reach all the hooks on her dress by herself, but maybe a shawl would cover the gaps. So Eleanor wrapped herself in her silk shawl, unlocked the door, and stepped out into the corridor.

There was no sign of the locket in the hallway or on the stairs. Perhaps it had fallen in their dining room? She knocked tentatively at the door to the private parlor, then pushed it open and walked inside. The room was dark except for the light from the fireplace, so Eleanor went to the grate and took up a taper to light some candles.

“I wish you would not,” a man’s voice said softly.

Eleanor whirled around. A young man was lying full length on a couch at the side of the room. His booted feet were crossed on one arm of the sofa and his dark head was propped carelessly at the other end. A very white shirt lay open at the neck. Firelight flickered lovingly over little hollows at the base of his throat.

“Forgive me, sir,” she said, her heart hammering. “I had no idea that anyone was in here. You didn’t answer my knock.”

“As it turned out, it didn’t matter, did it? For you came in anyway. But please don’t light any candles. It would be more than I could stand.”

“Why?” Eleanor asked.

“Because I am three sheets to the wind. Which means, of course, that it is more than foolish of you to remain in here with me.”

“I only came to search for something I might have dropped. It won’t take me a moment to look about the room and I’ll leave the instant I find it.”

“You obviously didn’t listen to what I said. No lady of quality would remain for one second in a private parlor with a stranger at an inn. Especially when that stranger is as regrettably foxed as I am at this instant.”

“Then perhaps I should introduce myself, sir—”

“Please leave, young lady!” His eyes closed for a moment as if in pain. “For you must be either a schoolgirl or a hussy. Either way we shall both regret it if you stay a moment longer.”

“Stuff!” Eleanor said. “This is a perfectly respectable inn. Your dress is that of a gentleman. Surely you can remain on your sofa while I search for my locket?”

“Ah,” the man said softly. “Then this is what you were looking for?”

He sat up in a remarkably smooth, fluid movement and held out something on the palm of his hand. Eleanor recognized it instantly.

“Thank heavens! Yes, that’s mine and I’m very glad to have it back. My brother gave it to me.”

There was the slightest change in his expression, but the subtle voice betrayed nothing.

“Then the handsome devil whose miniature lies inside is your brother? And the beautiful blonde—”

“Is his wife, Helena. Now if you would be so kind as to restore my property to me forthwith?”

Eleanor marched boldly up to the man and held out her hand.

“Dear lady,” the cultured voice said lazily, while his gaze swept over her. “Do you know that your pulse is very fast and that something remarkably erratic has happened to your breathing?”

“If it has, it’s because I am understandably nervous.” Eleanor could feel herself getting flushed, but only with annoyance. “Whether you are drunk or not, sir, you are behaving disgracefully.”

“Nowhere near as disgracefully as I am about to behave,” the stranger said with a sudden grin.

Before Eleanor had time to react, he had grasped her outstretched hand and pulled her onto the couch beside him. She landed against his chest in a flurry of sprigged muslin, one hand still imprisoned by his, the other clutching desperately at her shawl. He bent her head back against his arm.

Firm fingers ran gently over her hair before smoothing down the curve of her cheek.

“You have the most beautiful skin I have ever touched,” the man said as with his other hand he very carefully pulled away her shawl.

Eleanor didn’t struggle, though she knew in the last coherent thought left to her that she should. Instead it was as if a paralysis had seized her and the whole world was moving as slowly as a trail of smoke from a faraway chimney.

His mouth smiled above hers, his lips carved like a sculpture, firm and smooth. Black lashes swept down over eyes the color of violets. Slowly, slowly, his fingers inched her shawl aside. Silk slid across her naked back, leaving her nape open to his delicate exploration.

She stared up at his closed lids in an odd desperation, torn between a frantic need to escape and a desire so mad it left her breathless. His cheek dimpled a little, as if in secret hilarity. He had stunning bones and rich, dark hair, thick and—soft, surely? His fingertips caressed, tenderly moving up her neck, creating an oddly languorous sensation in the pit of her stomach. Longing fired in her blood, sweeping over her in a wave. What would it be like to touch this man’s lips with her own—press her mouth up to his and realize the promise of that sensual smile?

Yet he held her lightly, almost courteously, in spite of his thumb sweetly tracing the outline of her ear.

She did her best to gather her wits. Her mouth was free to shout for help, which would also bring down the inn staff and her mother to witness her disgrace—

“Well,” she said instead. “Which is it?”

The warm breath left her neck. He pulled back to look down at her, his lids very slightly slack above the blue depths of his eyes.

“Which is what?” he said with a smile. His fingertips still caressed her throat.

Eleanor did her best to summon every ounce of defiance. “Schoolgirl or hussy? I warn you that I shall take either description as an insult.”

It was a devastating smile. “Hardly a hussy, in spite of your rather odd state of undress.”

Hot blood raced to her cheeks. “Then what on earth is your excuse for showing so little respect for my reputation? For if I’m not a hussy, I must be a schoolgirl, in which case you are committing a form of robbery.”

“No, your composure betrays you. You can hardly have come straight from the schoolroom. Not a schoolgirl, either, I think.”

“Which shows you to be excessively wanting in judgment, for that is exactly what I am.”

The lazy, comfortable look in his eyes disappeared. He released her, though he still smiled with wry delight.

“I did warn you,” he said at last.

Eleanor sat up. She clasped her shawl around her shoulders as if it were a coat of chain mail.

“No, you didn’t. For how could a schoolgirl possibly be expected to understand what you intended?”

“You might have been a hussy in spite of being sister to the fellow in the locket. Since your dress is unhooked and you displayed no appropriate maidenly vapors, the odds seemed to be in my favor.”

“Your profession is to take risks?”

The sardonic mask slipped back over his face. “Only calculated ones. I make my living at the gaming tables.”

Eleanor stood up. Her legs trembled like saplings. “Then perhaps you should have done a little more calculating before accosting me. I am Lady Eleanor Acton, my father is the earl, and I would very much appreciate my locket.”

Yet instead of looking impressed the gentleman with the violet eyes threw back his head and began to laugh. The sound was muted since he put both hands over his face. Hands that were extremely well made and well cared for, Eleanor noted distractedly.

She began to back away from him toward the door.

“No, no,” he said, suddenly regaining control. “After all your intrepid bravery, don’t leave without it.”

He leaped to his feet. If he really was drunk, it didn’t show in his athletic movements. He was very graceful, this young man of lithe strength and lean muscles with the carved face of a Renaissance prince. He caught her hand and deposited the locket into her palm.

“I don’t imagine that you will forgive me, Lady Eleanor,” he said. “But I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. I’m afraid that I can’t let you leave quite yet.”

“Why not? Am I to be ravished? I assure you that would make me kick and scream with no decorum or composure at all, before becoming hysterically vaporish, of course. But since I’m known in my family as the brown hen, I can hardly be tempting enough to someone of your undoubtedly wide experience.”

“Do you always talk this way to gentlemen, my lady?”

“Never. But it doesn’t seem that I’m in the presence of a gentleman, after all. You have told me that you’re a gambler and I suppose you’re also a rake? I insist on leaving this instant.”

“Not yet.” The beautiful fingers closed on her wrist. “First you must tell me what you know about blackmail, brown hen.”

Astonishment struck her dumb for a moment. “Blackmail?” she said at last. “Is that your game? You really are a bastard, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling. “I am.”

“What’s your plan? To inform my family that you compromised me at the Three Feathers and then demand money to tell no one else? For God’s sake, sir! My brother would kill you.”

“The gentleman in the locket? Richard, Lord Lenwood, heir to the Earl of Acton, yes, I know him. He’s not a terribly good shot. I pray you won’t make him challenge me, because I would kill him and then you really would never forgive me.”

“So you knew who I was all along?”

“Perhaps I did, and perhaps you meant your other brother, Harry? He’s reputed to be a crack shot, though I’ve never seen him with a gun. I have to admit it’s enough to give me pause, though I flatter myself I could match him.”

“I also have a little brother, John, who’s excellent with a slingshot, and two sisters who would stop at nothing in my defense. And my mother stays with me in this inn, sir, and would very likely have you hanged for your conceit. Now, are you going to let me go, or am I going to have to bring the house down?”

“Your mother the countess, Lady Acton? Oh, Lord,” he said, and laughed. “Your family name is the same as the name of the earldom, isn’t it? Which leaves us with an entire bevy of Actons and maybe more than one Jezebel among them. I told you I was foxed.”

He bent and touched his lips to her fingers, then pulled her to him and kissed her fleetingly, just once, his mouth tender, maddeningly lovely against hers. She had drunk hot honeyed wine at Christmas, but this tasted infinitely sweeter.

His breath was warm on her cheek as he whispered against her ear. “Get the hell out of here, brown hen, and I beg you’ll forget you ever met me.”

* * *

The coach rattled up the drive of Hawksley Park the following afternoon. The Countess of Acton tapped at her cheeks and checked the angle of her dashing little hat in the small mirror that she carried in her reticule. Eleanor watched her mother with an indulgent smile. It wasn’t so unusual to have sisters who outshone one in beauty, she thought a little wistfully, but for one’s own mother to be so very lovely!

Well, the man at the inn hadn’t seemed to care if she was plain. She blushed scarlet and bit her lip. To have welcomed the advances of a self-confessed rake—obviously only using her for a moment’s amusement—did very little for her already slightly shaky pride. And his absurd threats of blackmail!

The only thing worse was to have to admit to oneself that it had been the most interesting experience so far in a remarkably ordinary life. For Eleanor tried very hard to be honest with herself.