Lady Notorious (Royal Rewards #4) Page 16

  She found a rhythm like this, the thrust and pull, and felt the heat building within her again. It was steady like that flame she felt for him; it was inevitable that it would become a conflagration. Oh, she was shaking from it, so close, and he was touching her within and all over—and then she was a firework after all, gasping at the pleasure that burst through her, letting it rattle her from the very core of her out to her skin until she hardly knew where she was.

  Dimly, she noticed George pull free from her body, roll to the side of the bed, and spend himself into a handkerchief. At once, he rolled back to her and took her in his arms. Spoons again.

  “You matter to me,” he said softly, and kissed the nape of her neck. It was an awkward kiss, one that surely won him a hairpin to the lip, and she adored it.

  Only now did they pull back the coverlet and take down her hair. They washed what needed washing, laughing about nothing at all, then returned to bed.

  He held her then, breathing in the scent of her hair, ever more slowly until she thought he’d fallen asleep. She watched their interlaced shadows on the wall until the red sky grew purple and the shadows vanished against it.

  And, wholly unexpectedly, tears came to her eyes.

  The sight of Lord Deverell bleeding hadn’t made her cry. She hadn’t cried when Charles broke his leg, either, or the time Jenks was shot at and almost hit in the head, or when that criminal stabbed her in the side—before she used her own knife on him. She hadn’t even cried, really, when Grandmama died.

  She hadn’t dared.

  She had a heart, but it didn’t beat near the surface. It was safer if she kept it hidden. And when someone needed something of her—protection, information, comfort—she could provide that. She could do whatever was needed.

  But when someone offered her kindness and asked nothing in return, her eyes leaked like a watering pot, and her heart thumped for notice, and it was all too, too much.

  The circumstances of an entire life were a great deal to pile up on the account of one man. It was unreasonable to expect him to balance the scale against everything else. Yet here he was, holding her, and for the moment everything was in balance. The pleasure and the responsibility of it. The power and the trust.

  It had never been like this before, the way it had been with George. The bedding, the hoping, the wishing.

  Which meant that it could never happen again, but that she would never stop wanting it to.

  So she was unreasonable, and being unreasonable, she fell asleep in his arms.

  When she awoke at dawn, it was to the sound of screaming, and George was gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Not even the Duke of Richmond’s well-trained servants could happen upon the Duke of Ardmore, supine and slashed by a knife, without screaming.

  George was already awake when the screaming started; he’d jolted awake almost every hour as if his sleeping mind didn’t trust Cass would stay with him. She had, though, sweetly in his arms. In moonlight, he saw that her brows were knitted in sleep as if she were dreaming fierce dreams.

  He smiled, and looked at her, and loved it.

  But he couldn’t stare at her face forever. When the sun started to rise, reaching faintly pink through the window he’d never shuttered the night before, he thought about getting up and tinkering with an experiment.

  No sooner had he dressed, though, than the screaming started—and no sooner had the screaming started than he was wrestling open the well-fastened door, careening out into the corridor, and slamming into the doorway of his father’s bedchamber next to his.

  The maid, who had carried in a lamp and prepared to lay the fire, was still shaking, her mouth an O of shock and her eyes hardly less wide.

  George followed her gaze—and yes, he had to agree the Duke of Ardmore presented a dreadful sight. His white nightshirt was liberally splashed with blood; his sheets were gory with it. He was groaning, trying to sit up in the bed and slipping in his own blood. George couldn’t even tell where the wound was.

  He put his hands on the maid’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Breathe. Breathe. All right? Yes. You’re all right. I need you to go for a physician. Or wake a footman and have him go. Understand? At once, all right? Leave the lamp.”

  She nodded, slowly at first, then with quick jerks paired with sobs. And then she was off, running. The hearth remained cold, the fire unkindled.

  George shut the door behind her, praying she hadn’t woken the entire inn, then strode to his father’s bedside. “Father? Where are you hurt?”

  The duke glared at him, grumbled something, and held out an arm.

  “An arm?” George exclaimed. “All this blood from an arm?” He set the lamp on a small table beside the bed.

  “The bastard almost cut the damned thing off!” howled the duke. “Look at it!”

  George looked at it. Yes, in the crook of his father’s left arm was a deep and oozing stab wound. Or was it a slash? A chop? It might be all three. It was very deep and very big, and after a moment of looking at it, he had to avert his gaze.

  “That’s . . . very bad. Yes. Some bastard came into your room and did this to you?” He was hunting through his father’s belongings for something he could use to bind the wound. The bleeding seemed to be slowing—surely, it was?—but the sooner it was treated, the better.

  Ah! A cravat would do. Perfect. He held one up, then turned back toward his father. “Let me wrap this about your arm until the physician arrives.”

  “Not that one,” the duke snapped. “That’s my favorite cravat.”

  George stared at him. “Now I know you’re going to be just fine.” He returned the favorite cravat to its place, then picked up an identical-looking one and tied it around the horrible hatcheting of his father’s arm.

  “Someone was in your room?” The window was open, but it was hardly big enough for a man’s shoulders. “Someone did this to you?”

  “Obviously I didn’t do it to myself.”

  George counted to three. Then he did it again. His father was hurt and probably frightened, and he could not be expected to have the mood of an angel. “What did you notice?”

  “That he had a bloody big knife and was using it on me.”

  “So it was a man?”

  For the first time, the duke seemed to take in what George was saying. “I—hmm.” Harumph. “Didn’t see well enough. Almost dark still, you know. I didn’t see more than the shape of a person.”

  George pressed at his temples. “Someone came into your room, and slashed your arm, and left. Through the window again?”

  “Must’ve been. And might’ve been trying for far more than my arm. I said it was dark.”

  “Yes.” He wished for Cass. Only a room away; he could wake her when the physician arrived. She would know what to do with this evidence. She would fit it into one of her patterns.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Ardmore. “That this has to do with the tontine.”

  George hadn’t thought about the tontine. He’d thought about his father bleeding, the maid screaming, Cass sleeping. All the problems he felt barely adequate to solve.

  The cravat had soaked through, and George got another and changed the old makeshift bandage for a new one. This time, he tied it more tightly, and was satisfied when the starched white cloth didn’t immediately turn red.

  “I was thinking more about how to get you to stop bleeding,” he replied at last. “This might have done it. I would just as soon never think of the tontine again.”

  “You’ll be happy to think of it if I win the prize.”

  Again, George stared at him. Who was this man, hovering between middle and old age, who could crow about money while wearing a nightshirt and covered in his own blood? How had such a man ever created a family? Why had he bothered?

  “Fine,” George said. “Let’s talk about the tontine. You’ve never thought you were in danger despite my suspicions. What do you think now?”

  “That your suspicions
didn’t protect me. So what good were they?”

  George clenched his jaw, back teeth grinding together. “I will be back shortly,” he said tightly, “to see if you are all right.”

  And that was about all he could manage right now. After the loveliness of a night with Cass, he disliked beginning the day by being blamed for wanting to keep his father safe but not doing so.

  When he returned to his own chamber, only a twist of sheets remained where Cass had slept. She’d gathered up her clothing too, leaving no sign that she’d been there.

  But how had she left? Had she run naked out into the corridor? He peered out, as if she’d still be there, pale and bare. Then he remembered the communicating door between their rooms. It was bolted on his side, or had been. Now it was open just a crack.

  He put his face to it. “Cass?”

  “Almost ready,” her reply came at once. As good as her word, she snatched the door open with one hand as her other poked a final hairpin into a simple twist. “Who is hurt? What has happened?”

  Quickly, he told her, noticing as he spoke that she was wearing a plain gown he’d never seen before. “I think,” he concluded, “that the duke will be all right. And how did you get yourself dressed? Doesn’t that require the assistance of a small army?”

  Her smile was thin and distracted. “I brought some of my own clothes from home. I’ve always had them in my possession, in case of need.”

  He was thrown for a moment by her reference to home, thinking she meant Ardmore House. But of course she didn’t. That wasn’t her home; it was barely even his. “Today there’s need,” he surmised. “Need of an investigator, not Mrs. Benedetti.”

  “Maybe I can manage to be both.” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “God help me.”

  “Why should God help you?” He was merely curious. But it seemed there was no good tone in which to ask such a question, for she rounded on him.

  “Because I hate the work sometimes. I like seeing people better off; I like knowing that I had some small part in that. But I get no thrill from being in danger. I feel sick when I see people hurt.”

  He was wordless in the face of such passion. Finally he scraped together a single sentence. “I will help you if I can.”

  “You can. Of course you can. Making certain your father was all right was the best help of all.”

  But she had reminded him, yes, how temporary their alliance was. He had got used to leaning on her, to having her lean right back. They held each other up, and if she was gone, he felt he would topple again into wasted days and half-hearted hopes. He’d not made a difference for a long time, and she’d told him rightly: it was heady stuff, feeling as if one mattered.

  Making her way into George’s room, she shut the connecting door behind her and then sat on his bed again as if it were her own. “I agree with you that this has to do with the tontine. But this attacker is very bad. Two murder attempts, no successes.”

  “There was success with Knotwirth.” George paced the room, fingers drumming his thighs. “He’d never have gone swimming in the Thames.”

  “But he might have fallen in?”

  “He might have,” George had to grant. Knotwirth had drunk as much as Lord Deverell, and without the responsibilities of a title to distract him.

  “Or maybe the attacker is trying to spread fear rather than do true harm,” Cass mused. “He could be targeting one person in particular, but spreading the threat around so his true target is veiled.”

  “Possible—but if so, who is the true target? We haven’t a clue.”

  “We have many.” Cass ticked on her fingers. “The person is not conspicuous amongst the ton. The person has access to good quality writing paper, and he or she prints well and is intelligent enough to disguise his or her handwriting.”

  “Because of the note left with Lord Deverell?” At her nod, George added, “His or her? Surely not. There weren’t any women in the tontine. And besides, you just used a whole slew of masculine pronouns.”

  “That was for efficiency’s sake. A woman could benefit from the deaths of men in the tontine. Your mother, for example, to have a peaceful life.”

  “She arranges that already,” George said.

  “One of the other wives, then? Without a husband, Lady Deverell could take all the lovers she wants.”

  “She arranges that already,” said George again. “And those two husbands are the ones who have been attacked. Killing off one’s spouse is no way to make sure he wins a tontine.”

  “You are right.” She screwed up her mouth to one side, thinking. “So that’s another clue: who has motive, and who does not.”

  He looked longingly at his camera obscura. His special papers, his bottles of strange and wondrous chemicals. There would be no time for leisurely experiments now. “It’s not much to go on, what you’ve said.”

  From behind him, her wonderful voice was tremulous. “I wish I could tell you hair color, height, preferred bootmaker, and means of capture. I’m sorry. It’s dreadful work sometimes, sorting out a case.”

  “I’m glad for your guidance.” He turned his back on the makeshift worktable. “All right. So we need to consider who else might gain from these attacks.”

  Cass looked pained. “This attack was against a duke with a taste for gambling he cannot seem to control, and the debts to match.”

  “Yes, but there’s nothing for my mother to gain by murdering my father. We just said that. And anyway, she’s not even here, even if she could be bothered to pick up a knife.”

  “Not your mother.” Cass cleared her throat. “His heir might want to stop him from losing more. Hurting the dukedom that will someday pass along the male line.”

  George understood the words, but his mind required a long moment to assemble them into sense. “His heir—but that’s me.”

  “That’s you.”

  His head snapped back. “You can’t think I’d do this? I’m not capable of—well, physically I am, but I wouldn’t—Cass!” How dare she look so calm?

  And she sounded calm too, holding up a staying hand. “No, I don’t think so. I never have. And if I doubted my instincts, you could never have risked an answer if you were indeed guilty.”

  “But you think I’m a suspect in this attack? You can vouch for me! We were together all night.”

  She moistened her lips, but she held his gaze. “When I woke up from the screaming, you weren’t here.”

  “I’d only just left the room!” Good Christ! The rumpled bed might as well have been occupied by two entirely different people for all the warmth that remained to it.

  “What happens next is up to your father. Lord Deverell wanted to hush up the whole matter of his stabbing and pretend he went to the country to unpickle himself a bit. What will His Grace want to do?”

  “Contact Bow Street?” George sighed. “I don’t know. You are very cold, Cass.”

  “I’m honest. I have to be. And I’d do you no favor if you first heard this from someone else.”

  She was right, but it still hurt. It was the sort of rightness she’d maintain with anyone she encountered on a case. This positive mandate for honesty; it was so unfamiliar in the ton. One made one’s way with flippancy and manners.

  He folded his arms. “What sort of someone else? Someone I haven’t taken to bed?”

  All right, so George just made his way with flippancy.

  She raised her brows, and he felt the chastisement of it. “Someone whose motives you don’t trust.”

  He collapsed then, sinking onto the foot of the bed at her side.

  He owed her better than flippancy. She had told him once, she’d taken lovers for pleasure, companionship, protection.

  Why had she added George to the list? What did he offer her?

  She offered him all that. Pleasure, God yes. Companionship, none better. Protection? Call it partnership, rather. The solid delight of knowing someone relied on him and could be relied upon in return.

  “I
do trust your motives,” he said. “I needn’t ask yours, for I think I know them. You are troubled by injustice.”

  “Injustice is part of every corner of life. If I was troubled by injustice, I should never stop being angry. No, I’m troubled by crime. In this case, by greed on top of the greed that has been part of the tontine from its formation.”

  Her fists clenched.

  Only now, sitting at her side, did he notice that she was wearing the emerald ring of Mrs. Benedetti. Strange that it looked as if it had always belonged to her.

  George nudged her with his elbow. “But you’re also here because you like me. Don’t you?”

  She looked at him askance—and then she smiled, slow and bright as a bloom. “I wouldn’t have gone to bed with you if I didn’t.”

  He eyed her closely, enjoying the sight of her. The determination in her heart; the simple pleasure she took in sensory indulgence. These all showed themselves on her mobile features, and he could not look away.

  Must he? Not for a while, surely.

  He groped for words, but they all seemed thin and tinny next to her golden goodwill. “Well. That’s something.”

  “That’s a lot. You’ve no idea.”

  “I have an idea or two,” he said.

  “Show me,” she said. “And then let us summon the other suspects and tell them a few lies. We’ll see how they react.”

  “Fine, but my ideas are more fun,” he pointed out.

  “I’m sure they will be,” she agreed, and for a few minutes, they both enjoyed them, before work and worry intruded again.

  * * *

  “What’s all this, then, Northbrook?” Lord Deverell sounded as grumpy as any man who’d missed his breakfast. “The match race will begin in a few hours. Everyone will be heading to the track.”

  Cass had talked George carefully through the approach to the announcement. The gathering in the private parlor of the coaching inn, so that everyone was seated almost on top of everyone else. The closed windows so the room would quickly become stuffy. Everyone was uneasy and soon to become physically uncomfortable.