A Wicked Lord at the Wedding Page 17

  She sighed and pulled over so that they could exchange positions. “You wrote me a letter once, from an apple cart,” she reflected. “I always wondered how you managed to drive and write at the same time. And why that was the only letter you ever sent me.”

  “I wasn’t driving at the time. I was hiding. And I was afraid it might be my last letter to you.” He reached across her lap for the reins she had taken back without thinking. Their eyes met.

  “Have I become that difficult to live with?” he asked.

  She pursed her lips in admiration as he expertly merged back into the street between a coal-seller’s cart and a lumbering carriage. “Perhaps I’ve become too accustomed to living alone.” She didn’t mean to provoke him, only to be honest, and he appeared to understand.

  He nodded. “Then what ever I must do to remedy that ailment, be assured that I will.”

  “That seems more like a gauntlet thrown than a reaffirmation of our vows.”

  He laughed richly, as sure of himself as the day they’d met. “It might be, depending on you.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The former Kitty Packenham, now known as Catherine Wellesley, the Duchess of Wellington and wife of the most important man in the world, received Lord and Lady Boscastle in an aggrieved mood. Foreign and local newspapers lay scattered about the Aubusson carpet of her brother-in-law’s drawing room in Apsley House. The duchess’s usual empathy for Eleanor was displaced by a stab of envy as she surveyed the strikingly handsome man who accompanied her.

  So, the officer-saboteur had finally come home. How he’d persuaded the duke to let him meddle in Kitty’s private affairs she didn’t know. It was only evident that the demon threatened to spoil all the fun. And if he wronged her dear friend and favorite agent, Eleanor, the duchess would make certain he’d pay. Still, he was pleasant on the eye in his black top hat, gray frock coat, and pleated black pantaloons.

  She kicked one of the scurrilous papers describing her own husband’s activities under a chair. The duke might have his hands full as the world’s foremost arbitrator, but his family had paid a price. He might have died at war for all his children knew him.

  “Lord Boscastle,” she said as the elegant figure led his wife into Kitty’s presence. “How delightful to see you home.”

  And how she wished it were Arthur standing in his place instead of this unfairly magnificent example of English manhood. It wasn’t that long ago that her own beloved had been an impoverished captain of dragoons. Now, as Kitty sat on her duff collecting dust, the crowned heads of the Continent fêted her husband. And their empty-headed female counterparts pursued him between church sermons and state banquets.

  Kitty prided herself on how she had endured both his neglect and the criticism of society with dignity and ducal grace. Let the morally bankrupt assign her the insulting sobriquet of ugly ambassadress—a dull sparrow unfit to soar into her conquering husband’s lofty sphere.

  His wife she was indeed, the mother of his two fine young sons. As holder of this privilege, Kitty had surmounted countless scandals. She viewed her obligation from the heights of unclouded maternal instinct. She understood her influence as one capable of charting a course that even the duke could not imagine. For her children she would sacrifice so that posterity might benefit from her absent husband’s brilliance.

  Arthur could defend himself against the physical dangers of assassination plots and would-be abductions. Kitty’s duty was to shield her family from the slings and arrows of outrageous scandal.

  Even if she had indirectly unleashed the latest one herself.

  Who could blame her if she took pleasure in the little intrigue that she and Eleanor had invented? Their game had given both neglected wives a small measure of revenge, although last evening’s incident could have ended badly.

  Of course the newspaper accounts could be wrong. The man caught in the seraglio could have been an impostor.

  Kitty restrained a smile. How unseemly of her to have caused this stir while her husband was placating the world’s powers. She ought to feel ashamed of herself.

  She didn’t. She lived vicariously through the adventures of her spying ring.

  “Your grace,” Sebastien said with aplomb as he bowed before her chair. “Time has not touched you, except to enhance the power of your beauty.”

  “It has also enhanced the power of your silver tongue, Boscastle,” she replied with a faint sigh. “No wonder Eleanor has not visited me of late. I have missed her company.”

  Eleanor curtsied. “The young lords are now well, your grace?”

  The duchess’s eyes darkened in worry. “Lord Arthur has not been himself since his last cold. He eats nothing and brandishes a new bruise on his shins every day. I fear a blood ailment. I have written to your father in France. He is the only physician I trust.”

  This announcement was followed by a loud whoop of laughter from the adjoining room. The nursemaid shouted in warning to the boys to beware of the falling screen. A crash followed. A man’s voice, familiar to Eleanor, shouted in exasperation that he could not work with the nursemaid bellowing out a caution at every moment, and could she not allow the boys to be boys.

  The voice belonged to Bellisant, Eleanor realized, and when she turned her head she caught Sebastien regarding her in an appraising but self-assured manner.

  “Sir Nathan has promised to complete his portrait of the boys before my husband comes home for Christmas,” the duchess said, wincing as a door slammed in the anteroom. “Although how he can work when Ares and his little general refuse to sit for a single moment is past my understanding.”

  Neither Eleanor nor Sebastien replied.

  Eleanor was imagining what it would be like to have her own children. Of course she would have their portraits painted. Of course, being Boscastles, they would be rambunctious, brimming with charm. When she looked up, she saw Sebastien studying her again in that same self-assured manner.

  But this time he was smiling. And she thought they might be thinking the same thing.

  The duchess sighed.

  Eleanor blinked, remembering why she had been summoned here. Certainly not for tea and cream cakes. One did not celebrate a monumental disgrace.

  As if attuned to the underlying tension, the duchess gestured to the newspapers that lay upon the ottoman in front of her.

  “Please sit.” She picked up the closest paper. “I assume you have both read the morning news? May I quote? ‘Masquer Bares All for Abbess.’”

  Eleanor looked up from the array of morning editions that revealed the Masquer in his indignious glory. “Your grace,” she said as she met the duchess’s gaze, “I am mortified—”

  “I should imagine so,” Kitty said with an acerbic smile. “In Mrs. Watson’s house, of all places, and by London’s finest ladybird. It must have been a shocking affair.”

  Sebastien nodded in agreement. “To all parties involved.”

  The duchess narrowed her eyes in speculation. “Which one of you was caught?”

  Eleanor wished suddenly for a cloak of invisibility. From Audrey’s deliberate misaccounting of the Masquer’s description, to Fleet Street’s detailed if deceptive caricature, the culprit could be said to resemble Sebastien as much as it did her.

  Until Kitty had posed the question as to which of them was caught, however, she had not considered that he could be suspected of the previous evening’s embarrassment.

  But it made sense. He and Eleanor were now working together.

  “Your grace,” she began again, “I can say in complete honesty that it was—”

  “—me,” Sebastien cut in smoothly. “I should have known better than to enter an establishment of such disrepute during its busiest hours. I’d have been wiser to employ a more subtle means of infiltration. My competitive nature overcame my better judgment.”

  Eleanor lifted her brow. She doubted the duchess would believe this bald deception, but his chivalry moved her, nonetheless. Sebastien, gallant and strong,
lying through his teeth to defend his wife’s impossible aspirations.

  Oh, how she resented his cleverness. She was indebted to him more now than on their wedding day. He had saved her bacon and would never let her forget it. She wondered briefly whether he had planned this sacrifice all along, or had merely submitted to impulse.

  “Your grace,” she said, for the third time, “my husband is too valiant.”

  “As is mine,” the duchess said in a rueful voice. She stared at the papers on the floor. “Military reviews, operas, plays, and suppers. There is not a woman in Paris, on the entire Continent, who does not worship at the Duke of Wellington’s boots.”

  Sebastien drew his breath. “When one is as great as—” “Who is La Grassini?” the duchess lamented, her voice rising, her toe poking at one of the papers. “Who are these women without shame and self-respect that they interfere with his duties? These harlots, these—”

  “I have never heard of La Grassini,” Eleanor broke in tactfully. “She cannot be anyone of international acclaim.”

  “She’s a nothing,” Sebastien said, with a dismissive shrug. “A little nobody. An overrated squeaky-voiced coquette.”

  “Do you know her?” Eleanor inquired after a long pause.

  “Well, not personally, but one draws certain conclusions.”

  “Perhaps you have not read the newspapers,” the duchess said in a tone that could have been criticism or praise. “She is a famous opera singer.”

  “Not as famous as you,” Sebastien said.

  Eleanor rolled her eyes. Lord, but the man knew how to lay on the charm.

  The duchess heaved a sigh. “I don’t suppose you were able to get the letters.”

  “No,” Sebastien and Eleanor answered at the same time.

  Eleanor frowned at him.

  He smiled at her, then looked at the duchess and said, “Another time. Rest assured. I have my ways.”

  “He certainly does,” Eleanor said with a tight smile.

  The duchess fingered the pearls at her throat.

  “All charm aside, Boscastle, it does occur to me that Eleanor never got caught on any of her previous missions.”

  His brow furrowed. “Well, neither did I.”

  “Until last night,” Eleanor whispered, suddenly not feeling guilty at all for letting him take the blame. After all, he had deceived her about working for the duke. And, even worse, he’d made her want him desperately. Let the rat gnaw his way out of this.

  “What I meant,” the duchess hastened to add, “is that perhaps this is a mission of too much delicacy for a man.”

  “It’s damned dangerous,” he said with a scowl.

  The duchess gave him a soothing smile. “You must have been frightened to death when they caught you last night.”

  “No, I was only frightened for—your reaction.”

  The duchess turned pink.

  Sebastien glanced at Eleanor with a grin of triumph that made her want to slap him with one of the duchess’s newspapers.

  And then she glanced down at a cartoon of the Masquer’s plump behind.

  “People know better than to trust anonymous journalists,” Eleanor said, nudging the paper under her chair.

  “Who can the people trust?” the duchess snapped back. “Not our poor mad sovereign in Windsor. Prinny is a proper mess. Even Lord Byron is tainted by some type of unspeakable scandal.”

  “Incest,” Sebastien murmured.

  “I said unspeakable.” A sigh fluttered from her lips. “To whom, I beg you—to whom can an honest Englishman turn to in these troublesome times?”

  Sebastien flashed her a smile. “To you, your grace.”

  Her mouth trembled in wry pleasure. “I am hardly a political force, flatterer. I suppose you charmed your way out of last night’s situation.”

  Sebastien hesitated, his blue eyes twinkling.

  The duchess raised her hand. “Say nothing. It never happened. The letters will be found. I trust you. That said, I prefer you give me any impressions you have received from Paris of late.”

  The request signaled a change of direction.

  The duchess rang for refreshments. Soon a battalion of servants sallied back and forth bearing pots of tea, coffee, and her grace’s preferred afternoon ratafia, a liqueur of steeped fruit and almonds.

  The conversation stayed on safer topics until the clamor of voices from the exterior hallway brought the appointment to an end. “That is young Ares with his army of one and their Amazonian nursemaid again,” the duchess said. “I must go.” She gave Sebastien a fond smile. “Young boys can be terribly naughty at times, can’t they?”

  He bowed. “Young girls can be worse. Or so I’ve heard,” he added with a sidelong glance at Eleanor.

  “You will be careful, both of you?” the duchess said in hesitation.

  He straightened. “My wife has agreed to let me handle this matter entirely. She realizes that I possess certain skills in subterfuge.”

  “If not in subtlety,” Eleanor said in a wry voice.

  Sebastien followed Eleanor through the vast hallway. He let her lead the way, noting that she walked straight past the open door of the gallery in which Bellisant worked, his slender white-shirted form wreathed in light.

  Even if she were tempted to look back, the impulse was thwarted by the two red-jacketed little soldiers who jumped out at her from behind a Grecian statue.

  Her shriek echoed to the ceiling, intertwined with gusts of boyish laughter.

  “Help me!” she cried. “I’m under attack!”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” The eldest boy, the duke’s nine-year-old heir Arthur, advanced on Sebastien while his brother took Eleanor prisoner. “We’re at war, you know.”

  “War is all very well and good.” Sebastien watched young Charles wrap a rope around Eleanor’s arms as she pretended to plead for mercy. “But—”

  “War is very good,” the boy stated. “My father is the best general in the world.”

  “True, but—may I untie my wife?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s the enemy. She’ll get shot dead in a minute. You can collect her body then. That is, what ever’s left of it after we torture her.”

  “She won’t crack,” Sebastien confided. “She’s one tough prisoner, and I ought to know.”

  Sebastien watched Eleanor wriggling her shoulders like a moth trapped in a cobweb. She made a fetching captive. And he couldn’t help noticing that the boys were fond of her.

  “I prefer to take my prisoners alive, thank you. Especially when one of them is my wife.”

  Charles jabbed his wooden sword into his brother’s armpit. “That’s stupid. Lady B isn’t your wife. She’s Sir Nathan’s.”

  “No,” Sebastien said, forcing a smile. “She’s mine. I married her some time ago when I was a soldier.”

  The two boys shared a look, shrugged, and resumed their swordplay, lurching and retreating into the room from which they’d escaped.

  Even after Eleanor threw off her rope, she did not make any attempt to acknowledge Bellisant. And Sebastien would have noticed because he was watching her like a hawk. Nor did the artist betray that he was aware of her presence, although Sebastien saw through the half-opened door that he’d drifted to the windows and appeared to be deep in thought.

  “I don’t want to be captured again, Sebastien,” Eleanor whispered over his shoulder. “Let’s escape before the boys decide we’re both from the enemy camp.”

  She took his hand. He closed his fingers over hers, a protective instinct he could not explain. Something more menacing than swordfights or even jealousy overshadowed the moment. He wanted to take her home and keep her safe, to himself. He angled his head.

  “Do you intend to thank me for defending you to the duchess?”

  She laughed slyly. “Can you at least wait for a private moment to demand your due?”

  He slid his other hand beneath her arm. His head lowered to
hers. “Surely in a house this spacious, no one would notice if I kissed you.”

  “Behave yourself in front of those boys,” she breathed. “And do not stand so close to me with that look in your eye.”

  “What look would that be, Lady Boscastle?”

  “The one that is lighting a fire inside me.”

  “Then let us go home and stoke it.”

  As he escorted her toward the two servants in gold-braided livery who awaited their exit, the murmur of Bellisant’s voice and a chorus of youthful complaints drifted into the hall.

  A wistful smile crossed Eleanor’s face. “Listen.”

  “To the shouting?” He winced. “Painful, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a pleasant noise, that of children,” she said. “I had no brothers or sisters when I was growing up. I only had Will.”

  He glanced around.

  The duke’s heir stood at the end of the stairs, one foot planted on his younger brother’s chest, his toy sword raised to deliver the coup de grâce.

  “I have three brothers,” he said when Eleanor stared back to question why he hadn’t followed. “And I never appreciated them until it was too late.”

  “It isn’t too late, Sebastien.”

  He nodded. “Perhaps. I don’t know how they feel, though.”

  “If they are anything like you, I imagine they miss those days, too.”

  Only one person in London knew that Audrey Watson, tutor to courtesans and young noblemen alike, was as much a fictional invention as was the Mayfair Masquer. Unlike the notorious person Audrey had confronted last night, however, she had no intention of being caught, blackmailed, or exposed to the same ruthless society that paid her bills. She’d worked her way up in the half-world, sometimes on her back, mostly with her wits.

  Her former life did not exist.

  Married once to a tyrant, imprisoned by a brother who had betrayed his country, she had nothing but painful memories of her past. The present, at least, was of her own design. She was safe, if scandalous, a woman who controlled her own destiny.

  Lord Heath Boscastle was the man who had saved her years ago when she had given up all hope. From him she had learned there was no trait more compelling than honor.