The Sinner Who Seduced Me (18 page)

“Now where?” she whispered eagerly.

Clearly, the near fall had only heightened the sense of danger for her. “This way.”

They continued silently toward the rear of Kenwood House, reaching the servants’ stairs quickly.

It was difficult to accept that his fate lay, in part, in the hands of a woman—even more disturbing that the woman was Clarissa. But more than that, he’d somehow robbed her of what made Clarissa Clarissa. And he wasn’t sure he could ever forgive himself for that.

“Careful on the stairs,” James hissed to Iris as they descended, a faint glow of candlelight dimly illuminating the hall as they approached the bottom.

He guided her through the servants’ dining room, toward the large kitchen, the light growing steadily brighter.

“
Mes petits
, I was afraid you’d decided against going,” Clarissa remarked upon their entry, her perfect French accent both seductive and startling to James.

She was St. Michelle. From her shorn glossy black locks down to her perfectly polished Hessian boots, she’d become what he’d wanted her to be.

“I would not miss this for all the world,” Iris answered teasingly.

“
Non
, I suppose you would not,” Clarissa answered, then threw the lock on the sturdy wooden door. “
Allons-y!
”

“You cannot mean for me to ride
astride.
”

Clarissa ducked down below Winston’s side and fiddled with his saddle pad in an attempt to hide her relief. “I suppose that we will not be able to go?
Dommage.
”

Iris let out a huff of irritation. “Why is it necessary for us to travel by horse when we possess perfectly serviceable carriages?”

James smoothed out the saddle pad on the dappled gray before setting the saddle atop the horse. “This is not the Cyprians’ Ball, mademoiselle. There we had the advantage of masks.”

“But I am wearing the costume, just as you requested,” she replied, gesturing to her hastily tailored clothing.

Clarissa stood and looked at Iris. All the bindings in the world would not make the woman look like a man. Her curves were somewhat hidden, though recognizable if one bothered to look closely. Her hair, the fair complexion, the ridiculously pert cupid’s bow of a mouth. The disguise was lunacy. Clarissa bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing and walked to the tack room, eyeing the saddle she’d used on her first ride.

“
Oui
, the costume is a start. But we cannot arrive in an expensive carriage and expect to go unnoticed. This is a completely different clientele, Mademoiselle Bennett,” James replied, cinching the saddle of the chestnut intended for the girl. “
Très
dangerous, on that you can be sure.”

Clarissa knew that what James was keeping from Iris had everything to do with the two of them and nothing to do with the girl. It would be the end of everything if they were recognized at the boxing match by an acquaintance. From what Pettibone had suggested, James had only been involved with Les Moines for a year and a half—hardly enough time for the ton to forget his appearance.

And if they were recognized? Clarissa couldn’t bear to think on what would happen then. Everything that meant anything to her would be lost—perhaps even her own life.

“But there will be ton in attendance, yes?” Iris pressed, the sound of her voice grating on Clarissa’s nerves.

James had done everything but assure the woman that they would be dead by sunrise, and all she could think to do was inquire after polite society? Clarissa hefted the saddle into her arms and returned to Winston.

“
Oui
, but you’ll not be able to speak with them. Remember, Iris,” James paused, coming to Clarissa and taking the saddle from her, his face filled with exasperation, “you’re not the daughter of a wealthy Canadian banker. Tonight, you’re someone else altogether.”

Both Clarissa and James looked at Iris. Her eyes reflected something akin to frenzy, and her foot tapped furiously on the earthen floor of the barn. “Yes, of course,” she said, breaking the trance with a wicked grin. “I’m someone else.”

Clarissa wished with all her heart that the girl was, in fact, someone else. Someone who lived a good distance from here and rarely left her home. She turned to watch James put the saddle on Winston and glanced back at Iris, severely disappointed when she discovered her wish had not come true.

“Right, then,” Iris said firmly, taking the chestnut’s reins in her hand and pulling the mare toward a barrel. She scrambled up on top of the barrel and threw one leg over the mare’s back, her second coming quickly behind—and before she’d managed to secure the first stirrup. She instantly slipped from the saddle in one swift movement, almost as though she’d intended to do so.

James rushed to where the girl had landed somewhat unceremoniously on her backside. “Are you quite all right, mademoiselle?”

“That is harder than it looks,” she replied, waving off James’s offer of help to collect her from the ground and getting her feet beneath her all on her own. She stood, wiped the dust from her breeches, and looked at James. “Now, give a man a foot up, won’t you?”

James held the mare’s reins with one hand and cupped Iris’s foot with the other, supporting her until the boot was firmly settled in the stirrup and her other leg had cleared the mare’s back. She hooked her second foot into the iron and beamed triumphantly.

James turned to Clarissa but she pinned him with a warning glare as she took up Winston’s reins. She’d been masquerading as a man far longer than Iris. If she couldn’t mount her own horse … Well, she wasn’t quite sure why it was important at that very moment, but it was, and that was enough.

“Do prepare for a long night, won’t you, Winston?” Clarissa whispered to the Thoroughbred. He snorted in reply. She lifted her foot and placed it securely in the stirrup, offering a prayer before firmly gripping the saddle and pulling herself up while pushing down hard on the stirrup. She hastily threw the other leg over Winston’s back, then slid into the saddle and willed herself to stop. “Rougier,
dépêchez-vous,
” she said reproachfully, then caught the second iron with her booted foot.

The servant had only been able to supply James with the farmer’s name and a general idea of the location of the match. But they’d ridden toward Cricklewood, where the light from the torches glowed ahead of them.

It was meant to be an inconsequential match between two promising, but by no means important, pugilists. The growing din of human voices as the three continued down the dirt road toward the light made James wonder whether the servant had been correct.

“Oy. Out of the way,” a driver yelled from behind. James gestured for Clarissa and Iris to follow him onto the grass.

The carriage navigated the rutted road and made to pass them. “Plenty of people for such a small match, yes?” he asked of the driver.

“Seems Percy was released today. Came straight here to fight,” the man replied, clucking to the bay to keep moving.

James slowed his gray and allowed the carriage to move on before reclaiming the road.

“Percy?” Clarissa asked, appearing at his side.

James clenched the leather reins between his fingers. “Thomas Percy. Best boxer in London—some say all of Europe and beyond too. He most recently resided in Newgate Prison.”

“Why?”

James turned to Clarissa. “You do not want to know.”

“Well,” Clarissa began pragmatically, “at least none of us is his opponent. What do you know,” she added, low enough so that Iris could not hear, “there is a silver lining of sorts.”

“What are you two discussing?” Iris asked, awkwardly urging her mare up alongside James’s gray.

Being detained between two beautiful women was normally something that James would have enjoyed. But their incessant questions were making it very difficult to do so. “Apparently, one of the boxers has been replaced by a much more notable pugilist.”

“You say this as if it’s a bad thing,” Iris replied disbelievingly. “Wouldn’t you rather watch a famous fighter ply his trade?”

“Although,” Clarissa answered, “an accomplished fighter against one who is not as skilled could become quite messy—”

“Do you mean physically? I’ve never had much of a stomach for bloo—”

“The problem,” James interrupted, needing the two to stop talking, “is not the quality of the fight. It is Percy and the crowd he has drawn.”

“Oh,” the two women said in unison, then fell silent, Clarissa clearing her throat in what she hoped was a manly way. The sound of the crowd was growing louder, and they were passed a second time by a carriage, the men contained within shouting in delight at having finally arrived to watch the great Percy fight.

“We must turn back,” James said. He tugged the reins gently and the gray came to a halt. Looking toward the crowd then at the farmland surrounding them, James knew there were Les Moines agents out there, somewhere. Pettibone had made it clear that he would send a
handful, though he’d refused James’s request that they be made known to him beforehand.

“We cannot!” Iris replied vehemently, continuing on toward where the match was to be held. “I’ve ridden—astride, no less!—nearly an hour to attend. And attend I will.”

James was torn. The appearance of Percy would mean far more members of polite society in attendance—perhaps even Young Corinthians, though he could not say for sure. But by the same token, identifying additional Les Moines agents was part of his assignment, something he could not accomplish without giving Pettibone cause to send the agents out in the first place.

“As you said this afternoon, with the completion of this evening—or early morning, as the case is—we will be one step closer to our goal.”

James could hardly believe that the words—so defeated and willingly so—could have come from Clarissa’s lips. If it were not for the fact that she’d followed the statement by urging Winston on toward the fight, he would have assumed a fourth rider had joined their party.

He urged the gray into a trot and drew even with the two women. “It will be necessary for us to be even more careful than I’d first thought necessary,” he warned Iris.

“Monsieur Rougier, you are beginning to bore me,” the girl replied teasingly, then took off at a canter toward the crowd.

Clarissa watched Iris as she bounced and barely hung on to her seat atop the chestnut, her hat nearly flying off every time a hoof connected with the ground. “This was all your idea—you’d do well to remember that fact.”

“You’ve no need to remind me,” James said gruffly. “Come, we best catch up with her before she rides directly into the bout.”

James allowed Clarissa to go first, realizing he would
have to watch both women carefully. He wasn’t an agent who found adapting difficult—quite to the contrary, actually. James had lived his life since Clarissa’s betrayal with little concern for what should happen and an eye toward what might.

But even James found the current state of his assignment challenging, “Devil take both the bothersome wenches.”

“It’s completely barbaric!” Iris exclaimed, her eyes glowing with excitement.

Clarissa flinched as a spattering of blood from Percy’s opponent’s lip hit her on the cheek. She swiped at the spray and continued to watch as one man beat the life out of the other. “I suppose to a woman, such a sport makes no sense.”

It certainly made no sense to Clarissa. Iris had insisted that they edge their way quite near the ropes outlining the ring. James was doing his best to protect the two, wedging his body between the taunting crowd and herself and Iris, but he could do nothing regarding the roaring noise. Nor the scent of sweat and inhumanity laid bare. It was as if every man in attendance had forgotten to bring his sense of decency.

A particularly vile individual spat into the ring at that very moment. Clarissa’s stomach churned. Perhaps she had been too accommodating when she’d assumed the men had simply forgotten their decency—she was more inclined to believe they’d had none to begin with.

Iris let out a high-pitched scream of delight when Percy landed a particularly nasty blow to the man’s stomach. “It’s so male—so different from anything we women are allowed to enjoy. But you’d not understand such a thing.”

Clarissa couldn’t help herself. Her eyes widened in complete and utter confusion. She watched as an umpire
called the end of the round and sent the two to their respective corners. Percy didn’t make use of his knee man but did accept some water and an orange slice from his bottle man. His opponent was finding it difficult to remain upright, his knee man literally gripping the man’s arms in an effort to keep him conscious. Blood flowed from several cuts upon his face, and Clarissa could swear that bruises were already forming angry black and blue marks across his chest and stomach.

Iris had been correct about at least one point: It was barbaric. The umpire brought his fingers to his lips and whistled, signaling the beginning of the next round.

Clarissa turned her head toward James, went up on her toes, and brought her lips close to his ear. “Just how many rounds are there?” she asked, not sure if he’d heard her over the cacophony of jeers and yelling all around them.