The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance (68 page)

“Madame Desjardins,” he said, with a perfunctory bow. He straightened, then ensured he closed the door behind him, a sardonic smile on his mouth. “Is it intended to mean ‘Star of the Gardens’? I like that very much.”

Her stomach almost dropped away. What did he want? “May I help you, Mr Foxton?”

The buzz began at once.

“Goodness, Mr Foxton is a Bow Street
Runner
,” whispered Lady Amelia to her bosom-bow, Lady Caroline.

Lady Caroline put her gloved hand to her mouth and her eyes glittered with delight. “What is he doing
here
? Do you think there’s been a crime committed?”

“You mean other than these prices?” muttered Lady Caroline’s mother.

“Have you heard?” one young lady whispered. “It is said that Mr Foxton is the heir to the Earl of Doncaster.”

Estelle froze. She took care to know the gossip of the ton. How could she not have known this?

“That cannot be true. I heard that he grew up in the East End stews,” declared the voluptuous Countess of Bournemouth. “And that he has a very sordid past.” She said it breathily, as though “sordid” was a commendable thing.

“I think he is trying to look down Lady Armitage’s bodice!”

That would not surprise Estelle. Trevelyan had always been a rogue. And he appeared to enjoy making her clients shocked and uncomfortable. “Madame Desjardins,” he began, in a voice that had deepened and roughened and grown even more magnetic in ten years, “I hate to trouble you, but I would like a private word.”

The ladies gasped. For, of course, it meant he must walk through her shop, past the curtained rooms in which women stood in various states of undress. “Miss Sims,” she instructed her best seamstress, “advise the ladies to keep their curtains closed, if you please. Mr Foxton, you may come to my office. I assume a respectable representative of Bow Street will keep his eyes averted.”

Oh, she was not prepared to have him in her private office. At once he went to her desk and tried the drawers. “The key, please, Sal.”

That name. She had not heard it for ten years. It was
not
her name any more. “If you want my help, do not call me that, Lyan.” She carried her keys in a pocket sewn into her dress, skilfully designed so as not to ruin the line of the smooth-flowing skirt.

This was her sanctuary — this office, this shop. “Do you wish to see my book of accounts? You are free to review it, if you are interested in what a satin ball gown costs these days. If it’s the measurements of my clients that interest you, I will not help you there. That information rests only in my head.”

He pulled out her ledger, planted his trouser-clad derrière on the edge of her desk, and flipped open the book. “I am here about Lady Maryanne Bryght.”

A shudder of apprehension slid down her spine. “Lady Maryanne? I do believe she
was
a client of mine. But why—?”

Her book of accounts landed, closed, on her desk. His green eyes had narrowed, and he looked so expressionless, she shivered. The Lyan she remembered had never looked so cold.

“You’re lying to me, Sal. That’s why I never came to see you before. I knew all you’d give me was a pack of lies.”

“Perhaps you should question me first, before assuming that’s all I will do.” She tipped up her chin and spoke with the bravado she’d cultivated on the streets.

“At first, I suspected Lady Maryanne never came to see you. I assumed she used your appointment in order to leave the house so early in the morning. I believed she’d headed for Gretna Green instead.”

In the stews, she had stared down any number of men — from randy young toffs to vicious pimps looking to drag her into their seedy flash-houses. But she was quaking now. “Then you should be able to find her.”

“Angel, that appointment was five days ago. She should have returned a happily married woman by now. I followed her tracks along the Great North Road as far as the border, and then she disappears. No one in Gretna remembers her. If she was wed over the anvil, no one will admit to performing the ceremony. She’s vanished into thin air.”

Estelle swallowed hard. That made no sense. She had investigated Lady Maryanne’s handsome young scholar. That was what she did. She smoothed the course of true love for young ladies about to be forced into loveless marriages. She had made her choice years ago — security over love. But that did not mean she could bear to see innocent women made into prisoners in their marriages. This gave her the chance to see others have what she couldn’t.

Her investigation had revealed the gentleman Maryanne adored to be exactly what he claimed — a studious, respectable, noble young man, the youngest son of a now-impoverished viscount. “Do you know who she ran away with?” she asked, trying to look shocked.

This was a nightmare. There was no one in London — in all England — who knew her like Lyan did. If anyone could see through lies, it would be he.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

She imagined he hoped she would incriminate herself. But there was nothing more she could tell him. She had watched Lady Maryanne climb into a hackney, and had loaned the eighteen-year-old girl a purse filled with money to finance the journey (since, like most girls, Maryanne had no access to money on her own).

She had sent Maryanne on her escape to true love.

She had hoped Maryanne had crossed the border into Scotland, where a young couple needed no one’s consent but their own to marry. As soon as they had crossed the border, lovers could marry anywhere, but Gretna Green was close and, since the couple usually wanted to be joined in haste, that was where they would stop. Vows were spoken over the anvil at the blacksmiths’ shops, officiated by the blacksmith priests.

Maryanne must now be safely wed. And blurting out the truth of what she had done would not accomplish anything. It would not give Trevelyan any more information than he already had. It would destroy her. And she was not the only person she had to worry about.

“Lady Maryanne came here that morning. We had another fitting. Dresses for her wedding trousseau — for her upcoming nuptials with her guardian, Lord Cavendish.” She managed not to shudder at the name. “I do not know any more than that, Lyan.”

“You do, love. Everything about you screams to me that you’re keeping secrets. You always looked your most defiant when you were telling me a tale. Now, how about we strike up a bargain? You tell me everything, and I won’t go back out and have a nice chat about our childhood with the Duchess of St Ives.”

“Don’t. Don’t ruin me, Lyan. It may please you to see me lose everything, but I would not be the only one to suffer. You see, I have a daughter.”

She could not have stunned him more if she’d hit him with a plank. She could see that from the way all six feet of him lurched back on his heels. And she knew what he must think.

“No, she is not
your
child. But I will be damned if I will end up like my mother — poor and in some stinking, wretched flash-house. My daughter is almost nine years of age.” She lied there. It had been ten years since she had last seen Trevelyan. Since she had panicked and gathered up half the money she knew he hid in his grotty room, and run away with it. “You know what her life would be like if I have to go back there.” Her voice was shaking, no matter how much she tried to calm it.

“Who is her father, Sal?”

“That is none of your business.”

“As I remember, the last time I saw you, you had agreed to marry me. We had our little ceremony in that warehouse. And we consummated our marriage on the floor of it.”

She winced. He had lowered his voice, and his words were a smooth-as-honey murmur beside her ear. “I’d say that does make it my business.”

Then, before she could stop him, before she could
react
, he spun her around, put his hands on her upper arms, and slanted his mouth over hers.

At first she froze in shock. And horror.

She stayed as rigid as her metal mannequins — or she tried. He was so much bigger than she remembered.

Then the tension — the
fear
— began to evaporate. Something else pounded in its place.
Desire.
Hot, maddening, inconvenient, disastrous desire.

He tasted of smoke, of liquor and coffee, of heat and man and sin. Every decadent thing about men she could imagine was imprinted on her lips by Lyan’s mouth. He tipped her off her feet, so she had to wrap her arms around his broad back. She melted, like wax beneath a candle’s flame.

Oh. Oh. Ooooh. She’d kissed him before. Made love to him before, which had been the most dazzling, wet, hot, wonderful and heartbreaking night of her life. She should be impervious to his skill — much more skill than he had ten years ago. His lips teased hers. His mouth forced hers wide and she loved it. And she moaned, breathlessly, as his tongue slid in and played and reminded her of what she’d dreamed of him doing for so many years …

A whole decade. And the one kiss she’d had since then had been forced upon her. A harsh, vicious assault she’d escaped when her attacker had been struck with a frying pan. After that, she’d never wanted to be touched again. Until now …

She had to stop …

But to her shock, she couldn’t make herself pull away. Lyan broke the kiss, set her back on her feet and stared at her. With green eyes that gleamed as brilliant as lanterns.

“W-why did you do that?”

A sardonic grin twisted his handsome mouth. “I just wanted to see if it had been worth thinking about you for all these years.”

His very answer terrified her. There was no hatred in his voice. Only regret. “And was it?” she asked coolly.

“Let’s just say I can have my secrets too.” But his gaze ravaged her mouth. And her lips were still so sensitive, just the heat in his vivid emerald eyes made her tremble.

“I promise you, Sal,” he growled, “I will get to the truth. I will find out if you were involved with Lady Maryanne’s disappearance. And I’ll find out if you are keeping my daughter from me.”

Lyan followed the tall, icily correct butler down the gloomy halls of Cavendish House — he felt he was trailing a walking cadaver. As he neared his client’s study, he planned what he would say. What he would reveal.

He hadn’t expected Sally to give him any information. But he’d observed her shock when he’d said Maryanne was missing, and it had told him more than words. Sal had known he would question her about a marriage — she’d never anticipated a disappearance.

And he hadn’t anticipated kissing her. His mouth had been on hers before he’d realized what he was doing. Her kiss had burned a path through his hardened heart like a flame along a fuse. He couldn’t think of anything but getting her back into his arms, keeping her there for ever, kissing and kissing and kissing her, until she was panting and needy and begging him to make love to her.

Never, on a job, did he lose control. Never had he let his sexual desire take charge. He couldn’t afford to do it now.

Yet knowing that, he was still mentally undressing Sally as he sauntered down the corridor of the Marquis of Cavendish’s home. He could picture her slender body naked, completely bared to him, and draped sensuously across her desk. For his pleasure, he arranged her on her front — on her small round breasts and smooth tummy — with her naked rump saucily lifted to tempt him.

Hell.

Even with their past hanging between them, with her betrayal sitting in his gut like a knife blade, he had to admire her. He’d always known she was tough, but now he appreciated she was also intelligent and clever. A better life agreed with her. She had changed from a stick-thin seventeen-year-old with dirty hair to a tall, striking beauty. Her severe hairstyle had made him hunger to tear out her pins and watch the whisky-coloured mass fall down her back. He’d never guessed her hair was that rich amber hue. As for her dress, it was a plain sheath that clung to her slender figure. It’s simplicity made him speculate how she would look without it.

If he hadn’t known her from the past, he would have been enjoying himself. A canny, beautiful woman — she was the type of adversary who made his work interesting.

When he looked at her, he felt … not anger, but sorrow and regret. When he’d walked through her feminine shop, he’d been stunned by one astonishing realization — the tumultuous ending of their relationship had been for the best. Where would they have been if she hadn’t taken half their money, run out on him and built up her business? Where would he have been if he hadn’t gone after her, gotten himself stabbed by a footpad in his distraction, and discovered he had to get out of the stews before that world ate him alive?

The butler rapped upon a dark study door. “Mr Foxton has arrived to report, My Lord.”

A raspy voice barked at him to enter, and Lyan found himself once again in the dark, cavelike study of Horace Beckworth, Lord Cavendish.

The Marquis tossed back a glass of brandy and stomped forwards. His jowls shook as he bellowed, “Bloody hell, Foxton, you haven’t found her yet. I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish by coming to see me without my ward, but if your goal was to infuriate me, you have succeeded. There are other Runners in London. And other, successful private investigators.”

Lyan disliked Cavendish. “You are free to hire one of them, My Lord. But this case has become personally interesting to me. Whether I’m working for you or not, I will find out what happened to Lady Maryanne.”

Cavendish grimaced. “Fine then. Have you learned anything?”

In curt tones, he gave Cavendish a report on what he’d learned at Gretna. “As yet, there is no evidence she has married,” he concluded.

“So then it is possible her seducer never meant to marry her — only ruin her!”

“That is a possibility. That’s why I came to you tonight. To find out if there could be someone who would seek revenge on you through your ward.”

“Revenge? For what?” The eyes narrowed in the fleshy face. “I will remind you I am a gentleman of honour. If I have made enemies, they would meet me over pistols. On that you are wasting your time.”