The Love List (19 page)

The floodgate inside of him wrenched open a little more.  Relief rushed in.  And exasperation and more than a little admiration. 

“Yer grace—are you sayin’ ye know this bloke?  Near cost me my place here, he did.  If ye know him, we should tell Mr. Rudd.”  His youthful face brightened.  “Maybe I’ll get a bit of my own back, around here.”

The weight that had centered in his chest all day lifted, carried off with the flood.  He very nearly grinned at Joe Watts.  “No, we should not, my boy.  I’ve a bit of knowledge of this one, you see.”  He shook his head, thinking fast.   “The description fits a rather notorious scoundrel, one known for odd bits of thievery.  He’s a dangerous sort.  Not someone you wish to tangle with.”  He sucked in a breath.  “I hate to see you suffer, but it’ll be worse if you gain this renegade’s attention.”

“Scoundrel?” the boy breathed.  “Renegade?”

Aldmere nodded.  “I do worry for you, Mr. Watts.”  He reached for his purse.  “So I’ll do this.”  He handed the boy a guinea.  “You take this—and you don’t give another soul a proper description of this man, lest you bring his wrath down on you.  And if Mr. Rudd gives you the sack, then you come see me.”

Joe Watts was turning the coin around and around in his hand.  “Thank you, yer grace!  That’s ever so kind of ye.”

“Listen, Mr. Watts.”  He nodded toward Miss Wilmott.  “The girl and I have an interest in this matter, as you understand.  I’d appreciate it if you would keep me apprised of any developments.  And I’d continue to show my appreciation in the same manner.  Do we understand each other?”

The boy’s eyes glowed.  “We do, sir.”

“Then we’ll take our leave of you.  In fact, why don’t you earn another of those right now, and run out and find us a hack?”  He gestured toward the shop.  “We’ll wait inside.”

The coin had brightened the lad considerably, and the prospect of more cheered him even further.  He held the door for them and propped his broom on the stoop before running off into the gloom.

Aldmere held the shop door wide, and entered alongside the girl.  Prints and posters covered the walls.  They flapped in the breeze as the door swung shut.  He crossed to the waist-high counter crossing the front of the room, his step light.  Restless with the relief filling him like air in a balloon, he began to pace the length of it.

* * *

Brynne paused at the door, unable to tear her eyes from the sudden lightness in the duke’s face.  They’d been arguing—both committed to equally passionate and categorically opposite life philosophies.  And then they’d been thwarted—the List stolen away by some meddling imposter. 

And now, in a blinding shift of moods, a great deal of tension appeared to have melted off of Aldmere.  His eyes shone bright, his jaw had loosened, his step as he paced looked somehow . . . jovial.

She couldn’t move further into the room or look back after Joe Watts.  She felt utterly compelled to keep her gaze glued to the duke’s broad, brilliantly carved countenance.  She couldn’t shake the sneaking suspicion that it might appear at any moment—the missing, elusive smile.

Aldmere didn’t speak.  Nor did he stop pacing.  The room was only dimly lit with a collection of candlesticks at a worktable behind the counter.  The press squatted, a hulking shadow in the corner.  And suddenly she understood.

“You know!” she breathed.  “You know who it was.  There is no notorious thief at all, is there?”

He shook his head.  Good heavens—was that mischief glinting back at her?  She tightened her stomach against a storm of fluttering.  The candlelight caught his mood and surged higher for a moment, picking out subtly lighter highlights in his thick, dark hair.  She stared, recognizing the danger she abruptly faced.

“Your brother?” she whispered. 

But she couldn’t bring herself to worry overmuch about his brother, suddenly.  Aldmere’s eyes had turned up at the corners.  And somehow she had moved toward him, after all.  Her lips parted, her heart pounded as she waited, waited.

She craved it, that smile, more than a sailor, months at sea, covets the sight of land.  She knew it was wrong.  A dangerous longing.  It was beyond foolish for her to want this man.  This duke.

This moon or sun, she might as well say.  He was so far removed from her in situation, fortune and prospects that he might as well be another celestial body altogether. 

But want him she did.  Had wanted him even when he’d been distant and defensive and disdainful.

“Who else wants that List as badly as we do?” he asked lightly.

But this—this tiny, almost-glimpse of a light and open Aldmere . . . it set her awhirl in confusion.  She wanted to surge hungrily toward him—and to just as quickly push him away.

“Of course it’s
him
,” he nearly crowed in relief.  “God, that stunt is just exactly something that he would pull.”  He grasped both of her arms.  “It’s him.  It’s Truitt!”

He’d pinned her against the wall, although she doubted he realized it.  She barely felt it.  She was too busy drinking in the jubilation that came off of him in waves. 

“My brother is alive, Miss Wilmott.  Alive and well and up to his usual sort of mischief.”

She could hear the joy in his tone, almost feel it bubbling in his blood like champagne.  Trapped between him, the wall and the counter that pressed at her waist, she was caught, breathless, waiting.

He surrounded her, so tall and solid and warm.  His masculine beauty drew her.  His power—even his arrogance—excited her.  He stirred her up, awakening cravings she’d never felt before.  But she was not for him.  She knew it, bone deep, and all the heat and longing in the world couldn’t change that incontrovertible fact.

But she would see that smile, damn it.  She locked her gaze onto his solid jaw and appealingly wide mouth and willed it to happen.

It didn’t.

Instead he gripped her tighter, leaned in, and kissed her.

The shock of it held her frozen for a long moment, while her heart tripped, then recovered to pound too hard, too quickly.  Her breath wouldn’t come.  It had been stolen by the heat flooding her veins.  His grip loosened and his fingers moved, traveling a soothing path up and down her arms.  And at last she let go, melted, and flowed into his embrace.

Yes.  This much she could have.  This much and no more.  It wasn’t really so dangerous, this warmth that followed his hands, gathering under her skin wherever he touched.  And he touched her thoroughly, sliding soft, whispery caresses up and along her collarbone, against the sensitive skin of her nape, then lower.  She arched into the spiraling curves he traced down her back and across her bottom.

Every bit of her throbbed with life, sizzled and tingled and strained toward him with an overwhelming fierceness.  She moaned, low in her throat.  He heard the call, understood her need better than she did, and pulled her tight against him.

Her hands slid up, hovering over the broad, strong breadth of his shoulders.  Then, greatly daring, she pressed her fingers into the thick, enticing abundance of his hair.

This she could take without fear, without giving up control, or worse, losing a part of herself.

He pressed the kiss harder, then slid his mouth along her jaw, trailing soft kisses until he reached the sweet, sensitive spot behind her ear.  Caught in a great shiver, she gave him access, letting her head tip back.

Aldmere accepted the invitation, pressing kisses into her white skin, letting his tongue linger over the dancing beat of her pulse.  This was madness.  Folly.  But damn it all to hell, he wanted a bit of madness.  Here and now.  He wanted to taste it, sweet and heady on Brynne Wilmott’s lips and in the enticing curve of her neck.

He didn’t know why this girl, out of so many, tempted him to abandon all the principles around which he’d organized his life.  Soon enough he’d go back, abandon himself again to long days of work, to a vast empire that meant nothing to him. 

But not now. 

Now, this minute, was for the deep thrum of need sounding in his core.  She moaned again and the vibration of it sent shockingly erotic waves through him.  His cock rose higher, harder.  He drew back, then, and found her mouth once again, demanding more, taking possession.  He ran his hands over her, wanting to inflame her passions until they ran as hot as his.  He explored her curves, tested the weight of her breasts in his hands, and thumbed the nipples that reached out to him in desire.

She gasped, and he nearly growled his triumph and satisfaction.  He grazed her again, running his palms over those tempting, distended peaks.

She tensed suddenly, breaking the kiss and whispering his name with a voice gone rough and husky with need.

He gentled his caresses in response, because this girl inspired the urge to soothe as well as conquer.  To protect as much as dominate.

Alarmed at such a thought, he stiffened.  She was already pushing at his chest.

“Aldmere, please.”

He pulled away.  Her cheeks glowed, rosy in the light arching from the open doorway.

From the doorway?

Behind him, a throat cleared.

He dropped his hands from her and turned slowly.  A portly gentleman glared at him over the lantern in his hand.  Aldmere noted the food stains on his waistcoat and the ink stains on his fingers and deduced his identity even before Joe Watts popped out from behind him, eyes rolling wildly.

“As ye see, Mr. Rudd, it’s just my cousin and her, ah . . . gentleman friend.  I’m ever so sorry, sir,” he continued, raising his brows in Aldmere’s direction, “but I could not find you a hack before my master here bade me to return with him.”

Aldmere straightened and stepped back.  “No matter.  I appreciate the effort.”  He paused, not wishing to cause further trouble for the boy.  “You must be sure to send those prints I requested, when you can.”  With a nod to the printer, he stepped toward the door.  “A good evening to you, sir.”

Rudd let out a harrumph, but stepped aside as Aldmere guided Miss Wilmott past the pair and out the door.  Cheeks aflame, she allowed it, and walked silently by his side as they left the shop.

Full dark had fallen.  He stepped out, unable to decide if he was exhausted or exhilarated.  He steered her to the left, more than ready to leave behind the dark, walled-in passage of Paternoster Row.

Silence reigned as they walked.  Aldmere held her close and let his senses range out, watching for anything out of place or anyone wandering too close.  Not until they reached the well-lit width of Cheapside did he venture to speak.

“Miss Wilmott,” he began.

“Brynne,” she interrupted.  “After the day we’ve just had and the ill-conceived manner in which we concluded it, I think I would prefer if you used my given name.”

“I wouldn’t call it ill-conceived,” he said quietly.

“No?”  She gave a short, vaguely hysterical chuckle.

“Unexpected, perhaps.”

“And lovely,” she whispered.  He felt her shoulders straighten.  “But best forgotten.” 

“Forgotten?”  Desire still moved through his veins, a low thrum vibrating at the base of his spine, eager to flare high again.  He hoped she could hear the incredulity her suggestion brought on.

“Yes,” she answered.  His frustrated nether parts mourned at her firm resolution.  “We’ve worked well together today and come a fair way in uncovering a plot that we didn’t even know existed yesterday.”  He felt the sudden tension in her frame.  “We’ve established that we each have our own paths to follow.  They’ve converged, if only for the moment, and though it’s clear we think and feel differently on nearly every level—”

Except the physical
.  But he was fighting to disregard that.

“I’d certainly agree to continue working together until we unravel this completely,” she continued.  “But I think we should define our relationship—as a partnership, perhaps.  And all that just passed should definitely be . . . forgotten.”

Her manner changed suddenly, and she pulled on his arm.  “Unlike the fact that your brother has not been abducted at all—but is in fact, at large, and in possession of
both
copies of the List!”

“Yes.  You’re right.”  His steps slowed a bit.  With difficulty he ignored the insistent call of passion in his blood and focused his mind.  He’d been so relieved at the thought of Tru being safe that he hadn’t thought that far.  He stopped altogether.  “But this means that we’ve both met our goals, after a fashion.”

She sucked in a breath.  “Then you don’t wish to continue our association?”

He shouldn’t.  She was a walking temptation, even to a man like him, whose life was not his own.  Who hadn’t been free to indulge his own passions since he’d been a whelp.  Lord, he couldn’t imagine a more potent distraction, luring him from his tower of isolation, challenging him, holding him accountable, and yes, looking at him as a man, and not just a duke.

And good God, how was he to keep his hands from her, now that he’d touched her skin, run his mouth over her and tasted sin and sweet, honeyed desire?  Now that she’d dragged him from simple joy to flaming desire and on to near madness in the blink of an eye?

She was lovely.  And naïve.  And the inevitable target of a great deal of heartache.  This morning he’d wanted nothing more than to retreat from her and her impending doom.  But now—now he felt a sudden determination to thwart fate, to throw a veil over this maddening girl and keep this incident from being the one that broke her.

Uttter foolishness.  Impossible.  He should take her home and bid her stay there while he finished this business.

“No,” he answered instead.  “I mean to say, yes.  We might have met our immediate objectives, but this is far from over.  We need to find Tru and those manuscripts.  And somehow I feel we must at least understand what else Marstoke might be up to with the List.”  He shrugged, as if what he’d just said meant nothing.  As if he wasn’t ignoring his instincts and abandoning every principle upon which he’d based the last sixteen years.  “We’ve come this far.  We might as well finish it out together.”

God.  He felt free.  And exhilarated.  And sick.

She stared at him as if he’d hung the moon.