Sweetest Little Sin (39 page)

Hesitating, she licked her lips. “Jardine?”

“Yes, my love?” He knew how she adored hearing him call her that. His thick black lashes lowered as he drew her palm to his lips for a kiss.

She caught her breath. “Don’t you dare die.”

Jardine grinned. He stretched, his lean muscles flexing as he put an arm around her and hugged her close. “Don’t worry about me, sweetheart.”

She touched his chest again with her fingertips, traced a pattern among the scattering of black hair there. “Don’t joke about it, Jardine. I think if you’re going to risk your life every day, we ought to talk of it seriously, just this once.”

“But I’m not risking my life. It’s a boring desk job—”

“Oh, tell that to the cat!” Fury shot through her. “After all I’ve been through, I deserve the truth, Jardine!”

He laughed. He actually laughed, and it was the most carefree, joyous sound she’d ever heard from him.

He hauled her into his arms and flipped so that she was beneath him, pinning her to the bed with his hips.

“Jardine!”

He kissed her ear, then took the lobe between his teeth.

“Stop. No.
Ohhh
.” He pressed his lips, warm and soft, to her throat.

His mouth moved lower, igniting fires that danced and flared beneath her skin.

“You’re trying to distract me.”

“Mm. Is it working?” He gave her nipple a generous lick and ecstasy speared through her body.

Summoning all her willpower, she reached down to clamp her hands around his upper arms and tugged. He was impossible to move.

“Come up here,” she commanded.

He swirled his tongue around her navel. “No, I rather like the view I’m getting from this angle.”

“Jardine!”

He sighed, crawling up, looming over her body like a predator. He looked into her eyes. “Sir Henry has asked me to take over Faulkner’s job. I’ve accepted.”

She frowned. “You mean it really
is
a desk job? No time in the field?”

“Exactly.”

The flood of relief and joy in her heart must have shown in her face, because he laughed again.

In a moment, his laughter died and the light in his eyes warmed. “You would have borne it, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t have stopped me going back.”

“The work you do is necessary,” she said. “I would have borne it. I would have been miserable, but I would have borne it for you.”

“I wish I could be so magnanimous, but let me tell you that I’d have you manacled to this bed rather than allow
you
to go back into the field, my lady.”

She smiled up at him. “I don’t want to go back to the field.”

“In my capacity as head of operations, I regret the loss of a damned good operative. As your husband, I can only applaud your excellent sense.”

She sighed. “All I’ve ever wanted was to make a home, a family, with you. However,” she added, twining her arms around his neck, “I will, on occasion, give you the benefit of my advice. . . .”

He smiled as she brought him down to her. “You’re a formidable woman, Lady Jardine.”

JULIA St. Clement had never tried to eat soup through a mustache before. It was dashed difficult, she found. No wonder the awful embellishment had gone out of favor with modern men. Three days now she’d hidden behind the blasted thing, and already she felt weak and malnourished from struggling to strain any decent sustenance through it. Why ever had she let Papa talk her into this dreadful disguise?

Because she’d had no other choice—that was why. Papa had whacked off her long dark hair, fashioned a sorry little mustache from a lock of it, and threw a pack of clothing at her.

“Change quickly,
ma chérie
!” he’d ordered. “Fitzgelder will know my face, but he’s not seen you before. With this, he’ll never suspect who you are.”

And it was true. The man they both feared—for good reason—had been completely deceived. He’d not caught a glimpse of Papa, and Julia had faced Fitzgelder alone. She was properly introduced as Mr. Alexander Clemmons, and the foul little man had no reason to guess his new friend was as much a sham as the shabby facial hair. Papa had escaped. This bloody mustache, it seemed, had saved his life.

And now, God willing, it would save a few others. Hopefully, Julia’s would be one of them. Provided, of course, she didn’t succumb to starvation first.

“You’ve got soup on your whiskers,” her pretend wife, Sophie, announced with a girlish giggle.

“Of course I do,” Julia grumbled. “I’ve got soup on my chin, soup in my cravat, soup everywhere but in my mouth. Blast this disgusting mustache!”

“But you look quite dashing, you know,” Sophie said as she daintily spooned plenty of soup safely into her own mouth. “Really, it’s a pity mustaches aren’t more the style.”

“I feel wretched, and I look worse,” Julia assured her. “It’s a monstrous thing, and Papa will never hear the end of it when we finally meet up with him again.”

“
If
we meet up with him,” Sophie corrected, her sweet voice quavering. “The coachman has been so slow, miss. What if Mr. Fitzgelder catches us?”

“He won’t. Surely that locket you stole from him isn’t so important he’d come chasing us all the way out here.”

“I didn’t steal it!” the girl insisted for at least the dozenth time. “When he attacked me, it must have torn off in the struggle and fallen into my apron.”

“Little that will matter to him, will it? But I doubt he’ll be looking for you, Sophie. That locket is the least of Fitzgelder’s worries just now. He’s got bigger things on his mind, I’m afraid.”

“Such as killing your friend, you mean.”

Julia shushed her. They were sitting off alone in the crowded common room of the posting house, but still it couldn’t hurt to be cautious. There was no telling who might be listening in. Fitzgelder had men out and about, and they could be anywhere right now. The room was quite full of strangers, not all of them respectable-looking.

“Anthony won’t be killed if I can help it,” Julia muttered under her breath.

Sophie gave a dreamy sigh. “He must be very special to you.”

Lord, she’d quickly disabuse the girl of that deranged notion. “The man is a selfish lout who doesn’t have an honest breath in his body,” she announced. “He very nearly deserves to be murdered.”

Sophie wasn’t swayed. “Then why have we spent the last three days traveling all the way out here to warn him?”

“I said
nearly
,” Julia had to admit. “No one deserves what Fitzgelder has planned for him; murdered on the highway by cutthroats and left there to rot.”

Sophie shuddered, momentarily forgetting her soup. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just find the local magistrate and tell him? I’m not too keen on all this cutthroat business.”

“I told you to wait back in London, didn’t I?”

Now the girl was offended. “What? And leave you to come out here alone? I couldn’t do that, Miss Clement! You saved my life.”

“Well, I certainly didn’t save you from Fitzgelder just so his hired thugs could do you in on the road,” Julia said and stared longingly at the two shriveled potatoes in her bowl. “It’s getting dark. I think we should let the mail coach go on without us and spend the night here.”

“Here? But surely we’re getting close to—what’s that place where your gentleman friend is staying?”

“Hartwood; it’s likely some musty old estate. The lord of the manor had Rastmoor stand up at his wedding, and no doubt they’re all still reveling. Since we’ve not yet passed through Warwick, and as difficult as the roads have been, it’s bound to be another full day’s travel for us.”

Sophie sighed. “Well, I suppose we ought to stay here, then. I just hope, for the sake of that selfish lout you want to rescue, we get there in time.”

“So do I, Sophie,” Julia agreed, making another brave go at the soup. “So do I.”

Almost as irritating as this blasted mustache was the worry that Fitzgelder’s men had already reached the destination and accomplished their goal. True, she and Anthony, Viscount Rastmoor, had not parted on the best of terms, but she’d give anything right now to see that he was alive and well. If he could just walk through that door safe and sound, she’d . . . well, she’d be very relieved.

Then she’d knock him on his arse and ask what in the hell he’d been thinking three years ago when he’d wagered—and lost—her at the gaming table. Good God, as if she was chattel he could own and barter at will! Well, he’d owned her, all right—owned her heart and soul—right up until that night when Fitzgelder marched up to Papa, waving Anthony’s vowels and claiming that
he
was her fiancé now. As if such a thing could be legally binding.

But it was the fact that Anthony had done such a thing, even as an angry jest, that had broken Julia’s heart. She knew what it meant. Anthony had found out the truth about her identity and wanted no part of such a wife. He’d cast her off like the rubbish he believed her to be and Julia had never seen him again.

Indeed, Anthony Rastmoor simply had to remain alive. If Fitzgelder’s men got to him first, how would Julia ever get her revenge?

“IT’S broken,” Anthony, Lord Rastmoor, said as he inspected the underside of their carriage.

“Damn,” his companion, the Earl of Lindley, fumed. “I just bought this phaeton three weeks ago. Quite a piece, don’t you think?”

“I think you got taken.” Rastmoor dusted the dirt off his hands and trousers. “Most of the higher-quality conveyances have axles that actually attach to the wheels.”

“It certainly was doing that when I bought the blasted thing,” Lindley said, fairly diving onto his hands and knees to crawl under the carriage. “Are you saying there’s been shoddy workmanship here?”

Rastmoor was perfectly content to let his elegant friend get muddy. It was, after all, Lindley’s carriage. He should have been the one down there investigating in the first place, although what Lindley would have investigated, Rastmoor couldn’t say. The stylish earl likely wouldn’t have known the difference between a broken axle and a hay rake. Still, Rastmoor was happy enough not to be the only one with dirt on his knees.

Lindley swore, and Rastmoor had to chuckle. While most men might let out a string of colorful words over the condition of the axle, Lindley was more likely upset over what he’d just done to his clothes. He probably wouldn’t even notice it was some very shoddy workmanship, indeed, that put them in this predicament.

In fact, it hardly looked like workmanship at all. No, if Rastmoor didn’t know better, he might even wonder if the damage to Lindley’s carriage was intentional. But that was ridiculous. Who would tamper with Lindley’s carriage? Unless, of course . . .

But that was ridiculous, too. Surely dear cousin Fitzgelder would not stoop to something like this, would he? No, this had to be merely an accident.

Damn, but it was rather coincidental, wasn’t it? Mother sent a message warning he’d best get himself to London for some unnamed trouble Fitzgelder was stirring up, and now something so unusual as this threatened to delay him. Could it be mere coincidence? He wanted to believe so, but somehow he just couldn’t.

What was Fitzgelder about, this time? The terms of Grandfather’s will had been well settled these two years. Surely his cousin couldn’t think to dredge all that up again, could he? Then again, Rastmoor had learned the hard way not to put anything past Cedrick Fitzgelder.

“What rotten luck,” Lindley said finally, uttering a few more oaths and crawling out from under his carriage. “I don’t suppose you have a spare axle or whatever you said that was?”

“No, I don’t,” Rastmoor said. “But if you have some straps or the like, we might be able to bind the thing well enough to get it back to that posting house we just passed. We won’t be riding, though.”

Lindley bit his lip and glanced around at the dusky trees lining the road on either side of them. “That’s slow going, isn’t it?”

“I suppose, but with that axle broken, we’re done for the night, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, it appears that way, but I’m not sure my horses are up for pulling dead weight. Even if we bind it, that axle won’t turn very well, will it?”

So Lindley did have some basic understanding of the mechanics of the thing. Well, he couldn’t very well blame the man for not wanting to overtax his cattle. The only thing finer than Lindley’s wardrobe was his stables, and these two goers were as good as they got. It would be a shame for such proud horseflesh to be dragging a lame carriage all the way to that posting house.

“All right, help me loose them, then. We’ll walk the horses and send someone back to get your precious phaeton.”

Lindley agreed, then noticed his muddied condition. “Bother. My valet will have my hide over these trousers.”