Wicked Proposition (25 page)

Gabriel staggered out of the house. He roused
his driver and arrived at his own residence and let himself in. He
tiptoed across the foyer and took the stairs carefully, his vision
still unsure. He barely made the last step, going down on one knee
before he righted himself. He entered his room and was grateful
Catherine was not in his bed.

He reeked of the stench of Lillianne’s perfume
and sex. He splashed cold water on his face to clear his head.
Gabriel got into bed and lay awake a mere moment before he passed
out, wondering if Catherine was angry he did not return home last
night. He fell asleep, vowing to make it up to her in some way.

When Gabriel awoke later that day, he was
informed by a frantic Mrs. Whitley that Catherine was gone. A
search of the house produced no result. He was dismayed to find all
her things were indeed missing. Catherine had left him.

Gabriel’s head pounded fiercely and his eyes
felt like they would pop out of his head. He still felt
disorientated from the drugs Lillianne had put in his brandy. He
realized Catherine had a considerable head start on him. He ordered
his driver about and hired a dozen men to scour the streets looking
for her.

He was grim-faced when he returned home without
her hours later. He dispatched a message to Nicholas and went to
his room. A chaotic search for clues to her whereabouts finally
produced the money and the note she left behind. He sat back at
stared at the stack of neat crisp notes. He didn’t need to count
it.

Gabriel cursed as he crumpled the note.
Twenty-five hundred pounds sat upon his desk, goading him to ask
the question he suspected he would receive no answer for. Where had
she gotten the money? It was a mystery, but he would get an answer
when he found her.

Gabriel spent a very uncomfortable evening where
he waxed between wanting to thrash the girl for leaving him, and
then became frantic with worry for her. He slept very little,
plagued by her disappearance, and blaming himself.

Nicholas arrived in the wee hours of the
morning. The man looked as alarmed as he was. Gabriel was a bit
surprised he had shown up so quickly.

“Where has she gone?” Nicholas demanded harshly,
his face pale as he joined Gabriel in his study.

Gabriel sat in a dressing robe and sipped his
brandy as he tossed the note to him across his desk. His dark eyes
filled with regret and anger.

“She left me,” he replied and seethed into his
brandy. “I would like to know where she got the money. She left
twenty-five hundred pounds and a farewell note upstairs in my
desk.”

Nicholas recalled the sum he used to pay
Catherine off and stayed silent, his thoughts racing. Catherine had
left Gabriel and used the money he had given her. He was elated to
know she had a change of heart after their afternoon and gave up
whatever mischief she was involved in. Disappointment was felt to
know she might have left his friend, but she had left him too.

“Did you quarrel with her?”

“No, we haven’t quarreled at all in many weeks,”
Gabriel remarked and smiled coldly. “She became quite an exemplary
mistress, you might say. She had me fooled completely that we were
happy. I had no idea she planned to leave me.”

Nicholas turned away and avoided the gut
instincts that told him something was not right here. The parting
gesture she employed did not fit with what he thought he knew of
her.

“If you did not quarrel with her, why would she
just leave?”

Gabriel avoided Nicholas’s questioning eyes just
then. “I might have angered her in some way.”

“In what way might you have angered her?”

“I believe I might have stayed the night with my
wife the other evening,” Gabriel disclosed with a wince, and
explained how Lillianne had lured him over, drugged his brandy, and
had her way with him.

Nicholas grinned widely, despite his worries for
Catherine. Just visualizing Gabriel’s wife violating her estranged
husband amused him to no end. He shook his head in amazement.

“That certainly explains her leaving you, my
friend,” he remarked dryly, silently promising himself he would
find his friend’s errant mistress. Only this time, he would not
allow her to go back to Gabriel.

“I want her back!”

You and I both
, Nicholas thought in
dismay. “You have men scouring the city looking for her, Gabriel,”
Nicholas reminded him. “She will not get far.”

Nicholas was determined to find her first. The
little tart belonged to him. Didn’t she realize he would take her
no matter what she had done? The thought of her wandering the
streets unprotected chilled him to the core.

Gabriel felt an ache in his chest to know she
believed the worst of him, recalling his honest disclosure of the
state of his marriage at the theatre. She no doubt thought him a
liar now. And, he had failed to say the words that morning, even
when they hovered at his lips. He loved her and had not told
her.

“Please, call in any favors you may to help find
her, Nick,” Gabriel asked gruffly, his dark eyes filled with pain.
“I love her. I should have told her that. I need to find her. I
don’t care how much it costs.”

Nicholas saw his friend’s look of torment and
felt the same. He had failed to impress Catherine with how deeply
he felt for her. Now she was gone. In some ways, she had left them
both. He left Gabriel’s house and headed to the docks to find
Tieghan. One way or another, he would find her. He wondered if her
business with Thornton had caused her sudden departure.

He cursed himself for keeping that information
quiet now. Had he not been so eager to get her into bed, he might
have learned what she was doing for Thornton and Lady
Iverleigh.

Now he was left to wonder. It ate at him,
gnawing relentlessly. He exhausted himself that night looking for
her, inquiring at every seedy inn. He returned to his ship
devastated.

Nicholas knew better than to ignore his
instincts something was wrong. He dismissed Gabriel’s theory
Catherine left in a jealous rage when he did not come home. He
would guess she had already planned to leave and had no idea how
her lover spent that evening. She felt guilt over what had begun
between them, too guilty to make the choice she must make.

###

Gabriel tipped the glass of brandy and stared
into the flames in the hearth, unwilling to conceive Catherine had
left him. Perhaps when he didn’t return home that night, she had
been angry with him. She could not have been half as angry as he
had been to be Lillianne’s unwilling bedmate that night.

He couldn’t blame her. What had he offered her
to encourage her to stay? What happened with his wife was his
fault. He should have known Lillianne would not go quietly. His
worry grew compounded every day that passed without any trace of
her. Too late he realized his feelings for her, and suffered to
know he had never told her how he felt. He reasoned it might have
made a difference to her to know he loved her.

Why had he hesitated to say what was in his
heart? It tortured him to know, had he told her how he felt, she
would be there now. Gabriel cursed under his breath, missing her
every minute she was gone. His dark eyes were somber as he rose and
stalked out of his study and went to bed.

###

Nicholas returned home late from his ship that
night, feeling deflated the search for Catherine had proved
uneventful. She had been gone many weeks without a trace. Nicholas
felt a presence in his room. He didn’t have to look. He knew it was
Lilly. He could smell her perfume as soon as he entered his
room.

He had a sense of disappointment. Her arrival
produced no sense of exhilaration as it used to, just annoyance
now. Nicholas wished to be alone with his dark thoughts. Catherine
had disappeared without a trace, unlikely for a woman who liked
look her. His inquiries on the docks proved no woman fitting her
description had sailed recently.

Nicholas was hurting inside. Catherine had
rejected him. He bristled with it. She thought herself too good to
be a smuggler’s lady. He faced that with a bitterness that left a
bad taste in his mouth for what he had done to his friend to have
her.

Nicholas walked toward the bed, his blue eyes
taking in Lilly’s lovely body draped across his comforter, and he
stirred despite his persistent thoughts of Catherine. His feelings
for Lilly remained turbulent and still unresolved. She would
assuage the ache of disappointment in him tonight.

Lilly lounged nude upon his bed, her glorious
ivory body displayed quite suggestively. She smiled widely as he
walked closer. Her blue eyes darkened when they met his.

“I thought you would never get home, my love,”
she purred and sighed dramatically. “Your servant doesn’t like me,
I fear. He refused to let me in. Can you believe that?”

“Tieghan doesn’t like anyone, my dear, don’t
take it personally,” Nicholas said in amusement, wondering what
excuse she had used to sneak over to see him tonight. Her husband
had to be an idiot or he didn’t give a damn. “It doesn’t appear he
deterred you. He will be quite put out to find out you snuck past
him again. How did you get in this time?”

“You left a window open in your study,” she said
with a breathless sigh as he started to peel off his clothes.
“Really, my love, you do not live in the best neighborhood. What if
I was a house-breaker? I would have robbed you blind under the
man’s very nose!”

“Tieghan isn’t a servant, Lilly, he is my first
mate,” Nicholas said dryly. “And if you had been a house breaker,
it is my guess you would not be waiting for me in my bed right
now.”

“True, then it is a very good thing I came here
for another purpose,” she remarked huskily and sucked in her breath
as he now stood naked before her, his hard, muscled body gleaming
in the firelight. “There is something I would like to steal very
much, if you must know.”

He grinned and lowered himself to the comforter
to lie next to her. He sighed as she touched him and caressed him
and soon all thoughts of the green-eyed beauty he had been dwelling
upon were forgotten.

He wanted to push Catherine from his heart and
mind once and for all. Their lovemaking was hungry and frantic, and
as intense as always. When he brought Lilly to a crying climax and
joined her with a low growl of satisfaction, he was ready to end
their relationship.

Nicholas watched her dress later and sat up
among the pillows. He frowned and lit a cheroot, in a foul mood. He
smiled malevolently at her as she fixed her coiffure.

“You may give it up, my dear. One look will tell
your husband what you have been doing. You looked like you have
fucked the whole royal guard.”

Lilly gave him a scathing look as she fixed her
hair. She regarded him with a frown as she approached the bed. Her
perfect teeth nibbled at her full lower lip. He could tell she was
aware of his turbulent thoughts.

“Do not be unkind, my love,” she whispered
softly, her dark blue eyes filling with some unknown emotion. “I
have thought of nothing but you these last weeks.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t return, Lilly,” he said
coldly and stubbed out his cheroot in a tray by the bed. “I find I
am developing a bit of a conscience these days. Dallying with some
man’s wife is getting tiresome.”

“You don’t mean that,” Lilly said in a small
voice. “You are just angry because I cannot stay as long tonight. I
will return as soon as I can, Nicholas, and we can be together for
as long and as often as we like.”

“Lilly, don’t come back,” he said without
emotion, his blue eyes meeting hers directly. “It is over. I no
longer want to see you anymore. Do not sneak into my home or you
will find another in my bed.”

Lilly stepped back as if she had been struck,
her face paling. She looked at him in shock. He was grim-faced as
he rose and shrugged on a dressing gown and eyed her coldly.

“I do not want this anymore!” he snarled as he
flung her a look of self-loathing. “Five years of asking nothing of
you, and I don’t even know your real name. I know nothing about
you. The more I know, the less I want this to continue any further.
Go home and don’t come back. Forget about me, my dear, and I will
do the same. We have had our time and it is over.”

“Is there someone else? Is that why you no
longer wish to see me?” Lilly asked in dismay.

He smiled at her question, thinking of the
green-eyed beauty he had failed to win away from Gabriel. She had
no clue how he wished that to be the case. Nicholas’s brief time
with Catherine showed him how empty his life really was. He might
have lost her, but knew he wanted more than this now.

“Yes, there is a woman I have met recently,” he
admitted and smiled, knowing it infuriated her. “I am sorry, but it
is over between us.”

“I have some say in this, Nicky!” she snapped
irately as she tossed him a furious look. “You cannot just end
things like this!”

“You have no say in what I do, Lilly. I have
decided it is over between us. Do not come here again.”

“Who is this woman you have thrown me over for?”
Lilly demanded with a feral light in her eyes.

“You do not know her. I tend to avoid bored
wives of the peerage these days.”

Lilly appeared livid, as though she might have
said more, but she turned on her heel instead. She passed Tieghan
in the doorway with a haughty look that made the giant glower at
her back as she passed.

He entered his captain’s chamber with a look of
pure outrage. Nicholas held up his hand to ward off his
complaints.

“You left a bloody window open in the study!”
Nicholas said harshly to explain the woman’s presence, as if her
climbing through it should be expected. “Don’t worry she won’t be
coming back again. It’s over, my friend.”