Suzanne Robinson

T
he viscount’s eyes narrowed and his gaze ripped up and down her body. When he spoke, the soft huskiness of his voice alerted Liza to a new danger.

“You got something against makin’ love, honey?”

Liza stopped herself from sidling backward.

“Making love, my lord? Mercy, what you want isn’t making love. You don’t even know me.”

He said nothing at first, then, holding her gaze with his own, he pulled at one end of his necktie where it hung over his shoulder. The black silk slithered against his shirt and came loose.

“Sometimes there’s just no talking with a woman.”

The tie dangled from his fingers, and she found herself staring at it. Then he launched himself at her and caught her. She shrieked and tried to kick him, but he lifted her and squeezed. She gasped for breath.

“My lord.”

He was so close she could feel his breath skimming across her cheek, and her vision filled with the sight of his lips.

“There ain’t no lord here, honey, so don’t bother,” he said, and then he touched her lips to his.…

L
ONDON
, 1857

If she was caught spying in the home of a viscount, she’d end up in Newgate. Was she mad to have come to the house of such a man as Viscount Radcliffe? His reputation conjured up visions of hellfire and brimstone, dark caverns that glowed with flowing lava and echoed with the screams of the damned. He was said to dine on innocents. But what choice did she have? The Metropolitan Police hadn’t believed her suspicions that he’d murdered two men.

Shuffling down the hall to the master suite carrying two buckets loaded with coal, Liza glanced back down the hall toward the servants’ door. Deserted.
Perhaps she’d have time to search his rooms this evening. She must succeed soon, for he was returning from America shortly.

She had just set the buckets down and grasped the doorknob when a crash signaled that Tessie had dropped a lamp on the marble front stairs. A wail confirmed Liza’s guess, along with the outraged bellow of Choke, the butler. Then the volume of the noise rose. It seemed that everyone from the knife boy to the housekeeper was babbling and rushing to and fro. Doors slammed, and boots clattered on wooden and marble floors.

Liza hesitated on the threshold of the master suite. The coal wasn’t actually intended for these rooms, since the viscount wasn’t using them. The most she’d ever seen of him was the portrait in the blue saloon. She disliked the painting, for the man in it exuded the cold beauty of an aristocrat and gazed down on her with cat-green eyes that had no soul.

Perhaps he’d lost his soul somewhere in the American West in one of those gunfights she’d heard about. For some reason the viscount preferred the frontier to civilization. He’d spent several years in Texas and California after his military training. Liza knew of no other member of the peerage quite so willing to abandon civilization for the savagery of Indian territories and deserts. The man’s reputation for recklessness matched his reputation as a marauder among the ladies of Society.

She resented the man for that reputation alone. He was one of those men who seemed never to be without a woman, though never with one who held his affections. Sledge had offered the opinion that the viscount seldom spent a night without a woman. Liza sniffed when she heard this. Some men were truly
animals. Tessie said he had not just one mistress among the nobility, but several, because the company of one woman bored him. How dare he possess a title, wealth, and beauty, and value his boot scraper more than the women to whom he made love? Liza disliked selfish men.

She especially disliked this one for sailing off to Texas two days after her brother had been murdered. She’d had to wait eleven whole months for him to return.

She started at the sound of running feet. If someone saw her, she had been planning to claim she mistook her way. Having pretended to a slight lack of wits, she might succeed in the pretense. Her plans fell to ruins, however, when Choke’s graying head and spindly shoulders appeared coming up the main stairs.

Liza stared, for she’d never seen the man run. Choke usually moved with the stateliness and care of a debutante at her royal presentation. The butler skittered down the hall shouting the names of the housekeeper and the two upstairs maids. He zoomed past Liza, the slick souls of his boots sliding on the polished tile floor as he tried to stop and veered around to confront her. His face, normally pale as Cook’s flour, had turned a rosebud pink. Choke heaved in several deep breaths as a footman and maid carrying fresh linen raced upstairs and past them into the master suite. Liza heard the mad rustle of damask and silk.

“He’s coming!” Choke had finally regained his breath. “Quick, girl, take those inside and build the fires.”

Before Liza could move, a stranger appeared at the head of the stairs. She hadn’t thought it possible that there could be a person of more dignity and
countenance than Choke, but this man had the demeanor of a pope. He managed to intimidate, though he possessed the slightest bit of a paunch and a high, glowing forehead ringed with brown hair. Choke moaned as he beheld the stranger.

“Loveday, don’t tell me he’s here already.”

“Five minutes,” came the sedate reply.

“Five!” Choke’s voice rose to a screech, then he bawled with all the force of his gaunt frame. “Two minutes, everyone lined up in front in two minutes!”

The footman who had carried the linens shouldered Liza aside as he left the master suite. He started upon hearing Choke’s bellow. Now Sledge was a big fellow, and young, and proud of his physical skills. He boxed and was constantly alert for opportunities to test his talent in the pubs and rowdy streets of East London. Therefore, when Sledge’s face drained of color and he swallowed and ducked his head, Liza understood just how fearsome the viscount must be. She listened to the cries of the household. The atmosphere was one of panic so tangible, the house itself seemed to shake with apprehension.

Her throat went dry, and she swallowed. Dear God, how was she to survive in such a household in disguise? Her skin went cold despite the grossly overpadded corset and dress. A bead of sweat trickled from beneath the cap that concealed her hair. Just then the man called Loveday appeared in front of her and picked up the coal buckets as though he were retrieving a queen’s discarded jewels.

“I will put these inside the door. Run along, girl, and make yourself ready to be presented to his lordship.”

Liza bobbed a curtsy, turned, and ran down the back stairs. Dashing into the scullery, she dodged a
tearful Tessie and the knife boy, and found the old mirror that hung in a dark corner. She shoved her straggling hair up beneath her cap, glanced about surreptitiously, and shifted her whole dress to sit better on her shoulders.

The garment was lined with layers of cotton bunting to make her appear plump. She made sure the buttons at her wrists were secure. It wouldn’t do for anyone to remark upon the size of her wrists compared to her arms. She found her mantle and shoved her arms through the sleeves. At the housekeeper’s shout, she joined the stampede of servants as they rushed up the stairs and into the reception hall. Hanging back, she allowed the kitchen and laundry maids to pass her as they exited the house and clattered down the white stone steps.

It was one of those damp January evenings that made the prostitutes of Whitechapel shiver in the streets. Moisture dripped from the black iron fence that surrounded the house. Inside the fence, yellow fog curled about the trunks of the trees that formed a protective barrier between the street and the house. It spread, unwholesome and cloying, and rose to knee level while the staff arranged themselves beneath the carriage porch in order of precedence at the foot of the front steps. By the light of the great brass lamps on either side of the doors they stood, shivering and waiting. Beside her, a kitchen maid breathed in soot-laden mist and coughed.

Choke, a crystal lamp in hand, marched down the phalanx of servants. He snapped at the knife boy to button his coat, then took his place beside the housekeeper at the head of the line. The crystal lamp rattled in his hands, and Liza was sure the tremor wasn’t caused by the cold.

Across the lawn, footmen opened the gates. To Liza’s surprise, two men in long coats and top hats walked up the circular drive. They drew near, and Choke stepped forward.

“Your grace,” the butler said.

“Not here yet. Good. Yale, we’ll wait inside until the carriage comes.”

Liza dared turn her head a fraction of an inch to glimpse the newcomers. The duke! The viscount’s father, the Duke of Clairemont, had come, to welcome his son home from America. Her only comfort was that the duke lived nearby in Grosvenor Square and wouldn’t be staying the night. The other man would be Lord Yale Marshall, the duke’s brother. But where were the ladies, the duchess and the daughter, Lady Georgiana?