The Perfect Princess (38 page)

He shut the door with a bang, leaned against it, and pinned her with his hands on her shoulders. He was breathing hard, and the flickering light cast harsh shadows on his face.

“Rosamund,” he said, making the word part plea, part rebuke.

She took his hands from her shoulders and cupped them around her cheeks. Tears leaked from her eyes. “I’m sorry about that stupid quarrel,” she said. “You were right and I was wrong. I should have known better. It’s just that if anything happened to you, I don’t know how I would survive. But I never,
never
want us to part with foolish, angry words between us. Life is too short for that.”

All the arguments he had marshaled to persuade her
to listen to reason went clean out of his head. He muttered something savage under his breath, then his lips were on hers and his arms wrapped around her, bringing her flush against him, as though he could fuse their bodies into one.

There was no end to it, he thought: the killing, the hatred, the ugliness in men’s souls. He felt sullied by it, because he was part of it. Rosamund was like the pure springwater that was to be found in the Highlands of Scotland. When he immersed himself in her, he felt cleansed.

The same need that drove him drove her. When she was in his arms, the world seemed to retreat, and all its ugliness with it. There was comfort here, and strength to face whatever might come.

They couldn’t get close enough. Still locked together, they took the few paces to the bed and tumbled onto it.

He rose above her, his eyes straining to see her. She was beautiful, he thought, her dark hair spread on his pillow, her finely boned features like pale marble in that dim light. He lifted her hair with one hand and let it run through his fingers. She was beautiful, and brave and generous. He knew he didn’t deserve her, but he could no more give her up than he could willingly give up the air he breathed.

When she slid her hands up the strong muscles of his back, desire began to tighten his body. She arched when his mouth opened on her throat. He tasted her scent, something flowery and uniquely Rosamund, and breathing became difficult. He filled his hands and his mouth with her velvety softness, then sucked her little cries of arousal into his mouth. He wasn’t aware that she’d undone the buttons on his shirt until her hands slid over his bare flesh.

He came out of that embrace like a drowning man coming up for air. He had brought her here for a
purpose. They had to talk. But Rosamund hadn’t finished with him yet. Her fingers were undoing the closure on his trousers. She was hitching up her skirts and spreading her legs to take him.

“This won’t make me change my mind,” he said fiercely.

She looked up at him, her face stricken. When she finally found her voice, it was husky. “You think I would use this to . . . to control you?”

She pushed at his shoulders, trying to free herself from his embrace, but he refused to budge.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a clod and everyone knows it.” He kissed her swiftly. “You should have married someone else, someone who understands women. I’m hopeless.”

The hands that were pushing him away now tightened on his shoulders. “Don’t talk like that!” she cried. “You’re not a clod. You’re not hopeless. You’re decent, and brave, and the most honorable man I know.”

“I’m also on the brink of insanity. Rosamund, let me?”

He brushed her skirts aside, adjusted her underclothes, and pushed her knees high. Eyes locked on hers, he guided his sex to her body and slowly entered her. Gasping his name, she moved against him in involuntary response.

“Ah, Rosamund,” he breathed out.

He held himself in check, gritting his teeth with the effort. He didn’t want their pleasure to end. He loved to feel her go wild for him, loved to feel those tiny tremors shake her body just before he brought her to climax.

His movements were slow, easy, tantalizing, drawing out the pleasure until the ache was almost unbearable. When she gave that little keening cry he was coming to recognize, he let himself go. Unfettered now, he drove into her, thrusting, plunging, riding her hard and fast. He could hear her gasps of pleasure, feel her muscles
straining as she met his frenzied rhythm. And at the last, her cry of release as he emptied himself into her.

She stirred first. “Of all the underhanded, deceitful tricks I’ve come across, that takes the prize. ‘I’m a clod. I’m hopeless,’ ” she mimicked. “You said that to distract me!”

The bed was so narrow that he was still half sprawled over her. There was a stupid grin on his face. “It was worth it just to hear your rebuttal.” He raised his head. “I’m not going to let you take back one word of what you said.” He paused, then hesitantly, “Did you mean what you said?”

Richard Maitland unsure of himself was oddly seductive. “Every blessed word,” she assured him, and slowly smiled.

A sudden burst of masculine laughter emanating from the parlor made them both look at the door.

Rosamund sighed. “We should get back to the others.”

“No.” He tilted her face up and kissed her softly. “I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. Just for a little while, I want to imagine that we’re two ordinary people. I want a little time for ourselves.”

“So do I,” she said fervently.

He got up and adjusted his clothes. “Can you light the fire?”

“If there’s a tinderbox.”

“On the mantel.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get wine and glasses. After all, this is our belated wedding night.”

When he walked into the parlor, all conversation came to an abrupt halt. “Rosamund and I still have to iron out our differences,” he said.

No response.

Three pairs of eyes followed him as he walked to the sideboard, picked up the decanter of Madeira and two clean glasses, and walked out.

Harper was the first to speak. “Turtledoves,” he said. “I told you so.”

I
t was Justin who went back to Twickenham, though he was loath to go in case he missed anything, and he vowed to be back by nightfall. He was to inform the duke of the murders at Digby’s lodgings and bring him abreast of things, especially Rosamund’s inclusion in their group. Richard had given up trying to persuade her to go home with Justin, but he was adamant about keeping her out of the investigation. She could stay, but only on sufferance, and at the first sign of trouble, he would send her packing.

She couldn’t come and go as she pleased, either. If she went out, Harper was to go with her, and Harper was in charge. What he said went.

“I mean it, Rosamund,” Richard said. “He’s an old soldier. He can smell trouble a mile off.”

“I’m not going to give him any trouble,” she protested. “I told you. I’ve arranged to call on Callie today. We’re spending the morning shopping for drapes
and upholstery for the house. I thought we had settled this. I thought we agreed that there’s no danger to me.”

He had agreed on no such thing, but he couldn’t win that argument because it was based on vague misgivings.

“Look,” she said, “if it makes you feel better, I’ll send round a note and cancel the outing.”

He let out a long breath. He couldn’t keep her locked up forever, and an outing with Callie seemed harmless enough. “Be on your guard,” he said. “Don’t say anything that could lead anyone to think you know where I am. And remember, what Harper says goes.”

Shortly after this exchange, Richard and Caspar left for St. Mark’s in Chelsea, where they hoped to interview Prudence Dryden and her brother, the vicar. Harper sat down at the table with an array of pistols in front of him, which he proceeded to check and clean. It was too early to go to Callie’s, so Rosamund occupied herself by tidying things away. She came across Caspar’s chess set on the sideboard and idly began to move the pieces around.

If these pawns could talk
, she thought,
who knows what they might say?
They were shuffled around from square to square, with no conception of the larger picture. She and the pawns had much in common.

Who was winning the game, Richard or his nemesis?

Hard on that thought came a wave of determination. She wasn’t a pawn. She was a queen, and a queen didn’t sit back when her king was in danger. She found a chink in the enemy’s armor and went on the attack.

Maybe she didn’t understand her enemy’s strategy, but she knew bits and pieces of it, and that’s where she would begin.

Her mind went back and forth, sifting through what seemed to be unrelated facts. She picked up the black king and tried to visualize Richard’s movements the night Lucy was killed. She moved on and came to Newgate. That’s when she had come into the picture,
and how glad she was that she had. She couldn’t imagine a world now without Richard.

She stopped right there, just staring at the board.

Something about Newgate had always bothered her. What was it? Completely focused now, she began to set pieces out to represent all the characters who had been present in the Felons’ Quadrangle that day. She moved them around as the sequence of events unfolded.

Prisoner escaped! Lock up the prison! the
guard had cried.

She saw turnkeys trying to pry visitors from inmates so that they could take the prisoners back to their cells. Callie was on her feet crying that nobody ever escaped from Newgate. Tell that to Richard! He was coming right for her. She tumbled over the basket; a shot rang out and Richard fell on top of her.

She went through the sequence again, then she had it, the niggling thought at the back of her mind that had eluded her. Before the shot was fired, there was no panic. And the turnkeys had their backs to her as they separated visitors from inmates. So a panicked turnkey had not fired that shot.

“Harper,” she said.

He looked up. “What?”

“Who fired that shot? I mean, when we were all in the Felons’ Quadrangle and you and Richard were trying to escape from Newgate?”

“I suppose one of the turnkeys panicked and fired the shot.”

“But there was no panic, not until
after
the shot was fired. And the turnkeys’ backs were to us.”

He scratched his chin. “It must have been one of the turnkeys. Who else could it have been?”

“I suppose you’re right, but . . .”

“But what?”

It didn’t fit in with the way she’d positioned the pieces on the chessboard. Then who fired the shot? Richard
had accused her of signaling an accomplice, but, of course, there was no accomplice. She remembered something else. Charles Tracey had become separated from them. He was in a corner of the quadrangle with the other prisoners, with his hands in the air.

“Well,” said Harper, losing patience, “are you going to tell me who fired that shot or not?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I’m going to find out.”

His voice rife with suspicion, he said slowly, “And how, may I ask, are you going to do that?”

“We’re going to Newgate,” she said, “and we’ll ask Mr. Proudie, the keeper. Maybe he knows.”

Harper thought he must want his head examined. He’d hoped never to set foot inside Newgate again, yet here he was, like a brainless stuffed doll, waiting in the hallway of the keeper’s house while Mr. Proudie entertained Lady Rosamund in the parlor.

It wasn’t really a house, just a suite of rooms near the main entrance, but getting in and out was a major undertaking. The doors were locked and guarded by two turnkeys. He knew he had nothing to fear from Proudie or the turnkeys even if they recognized him. After all, he’d been exonerated of all wrongdoing. It was just Newgate itself. It gave him the shudders.

He’d tried explaining all this to Lady Rosamund, but had she listened? Not her. She’d got this bee in her bonnet. They had to find out who fired that shot, though what good it would do them was more than he could see.

He should have put his foot down, but that was his major failing. Any woman who put her mind to it could wrap him round her little finger. That’s why he gave the ladies a wide berth. His friends all thought he was a woman-hater, when he was just the opposite. He was putty in their hands. Women was nothing but trouble!