Before The Scandal (16 page)

Slowly the door swung open. Shaking, Alyse climbed to her feet. She would simply tell him to go away, and no one need know he’d ever been in the house. She hoped her French was proficient enough to explain that. As she watched, the tall figure in his tricorne hat and turned-up greatcoat stole into the room—and then stumbled to his knees.

Good heavens
. “What—what are you doing?” she hissed.

He lifted his head, his shadowed eyes glittering. “Shot,” he whispered.

Oh, no. “You’ve been shot?”

When he nodded, all of the protests she’d been ready to utter fled. No one could be allowed to catch him. Not like this. She hurried around him to the door, closing and latching it again.

Moving back to her bedstand, she lit the lamp there. The Frenchman stayed where he was, crouched forward on his knees and one hand, the other arm braced closely against his chest. Alyse wiped her palms against her thighs, abruptly aware that she was dressed only in a thin nightrail. Quickly she grabbed her dressing gown off the foot of the bed and pulled it on over her shoulders.

“Let me see where you’re hurt,” she whispered, setting the lamp down on the bare wood floor in front of him and tentatively kneeling beside it.

“You should know something first,” he murmured, no trace of French in his very familiar voice.

Her heart stopped.
Phin?
All the blood drained from her face. “
You?
”

He lifted his head. Even with the hat and mask on, in the flickering lamplight she could tell. With shaking hands Alyse reached and pulled the coverings from his head. The light illuminated dark brown hair, damp with sweat and laced with dirt and bits of grass, and definitely, unmistakably, belonging to Phin Bromley.

“Apologies,” he said quietly, reaching up his right hand to turn down his greatcoat collar. “I didn’t—”

Alyse slapped him. Hard. “Get out of here,” she hissed. “You liar! You thief! How could you? You stole from me! You
kissed
me!”

She lifted her hand to hit him again, but he caught her wrist. “Let me expl—”

“No!” She jerked free of his grip and shot to her feet. “I am not going to listen to you any longer. Get out!” Alyse shoved his shoulders, pushing him backward toward the door.

Phineas flinched away from her, gasping, and went down flat on his back. How much of it might be real pain and how much might be him trying to gain her sympathy she had no idea. Neither did she care. He’d pointed a pistol, if not directly at her then certainly at her cousin. He’d stolen from her, and then listened with apparent compassion and sympathy when she’d told him about it later. And he’d tricked her into a kiss. Oh, and then she’d practically admitted to him that the mysterious Frenchman intrigued her. He’d played with her, apparently for his own amusement.

She reared back her foot and kicked him. “Liar,” she repeated, and did it again.

Faster than she could blink, Phineas caught her bare ankle in midstrike, twisted onto his stomach, and pulled her down hard onto the floor beside him. “Stop that,” he grunted. “It hurts.”

“Good. Why should I stop?”

“Because I’ve been shot, damn it.” He hauled her closer, looking down at her face from inches away. “I need you to help me stop the bleeding.”

She pushed aside the niggling worry that he might actually be badly injured. “What if I refuse?”

“Then you’ll have to explain my being in your bedchamber in the middle of the night. And…” He dragged her beneath him. “And I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that you knew what I was up to all along.”

Alyse looked up at his lean, serious face with the rakish scar across his right eyebrow and gaped. “You wouldn’t.”

“Only if you leave me no choice. Now. Are you going to help me?”

“I suppose
I
have no choice.”

“No, you don’t. Help me sit, and unbutton my coat.”

For a long moment she glared at him, before she pulled away again and sat up herself. “Very well. But you and I are no longer friends.”

Wrapping her arms around his good one, she pulled. With a grunt he brought his legs back under himself and sat. As she looked at his face more closely she realized that he was pale, except for the red mark on his cheek where she’d slapped him. With an exaggerated humph, she scooted closer and began unbuttoning his heavy, coarse greatcoat.

There was something…unsettling about undressing him, even if it was just his outer coat, and even if she was furious with him. “Where are you shot?” she asked grudgingly, having to move nearly into his arms to reach the last buttons.

“The back of my left shoulder,” he rasped, leaning his forehead against her neck as she pushed the coat off his arms and down to the floor.

She swallowed. “Why did you come here?”

“I was being chased, and I didn’t think I’d make it home.” He glanced up at her face. “And because of you.”

“Oh, please.” Raising up on her knees, Alyse looked over his shoulder to see his back. Dark blood stained through his jacket, spreading from a hole just at the edge of his shoulder blade. “Oh, my goodness.”

“You need to stop it from bleeding before I pass out, in which case I won’t be able to leave here. Take off my jacket. Carefully.”

At least she didn’t have to unbutton it first. Sliding her hands along his collarbones, she first pulled his right arm free, then gingerly lifted it down his left. As she glanced down at his face, she was disconcerted to realize both that her breasts were directly at his eye level, and that he was gazing at them. Her chest tightened. “Who shot you, anyway?”

“I can’t tell you that if we’re not friends. My waistcoat.”

Goodness. That meant moving even closer to him, balancing herself between his bent knees as he leaned back on his good hand to give her access to his clothes. “It would serve you right if you bled to death, you know.”

“No doubt. If I do, push me out your window so no one will know I was up here.”

“You’ll fall into the rosebushes.”

He made an almost-amused sound. “I won’t mind, as I’ll be dead.”

She felt flushed and embarrassed and confused, as though her mind wasn’t working entirely correctly. “I was worried for the roses.”

“Ah.”

Once she had his waistcoat off, she sank back. “I suppose you want me to remove your shirt and cravat now?”

Hazel eyes met hers. “I can manage them, if you’ll fetch some water and some clean cloths.”

For the briefest of seconds she was disappointed. It was rather like tearing the paper from a present and then having to leave it in its box. She had no intention of letting him know that, though. Alyse stood, walking over to her dressing table for the basin and pitcher of water there. “If you can manage your shirt, why have me do the other bits?”

“I couldn’t unfasten the buttons one-handed.”

That actually made sense. “Oh.”

When she turned to face him again, she stopped. She’d been to the museum, and she knew a magnificent figure of a male when she saw one. She was looking at one.
Good heavens
. Most fascinating of all was the light dusting of dark hair across his chest and the way it narrowed down his flat belly to disappear into his trousers.

Only when he curled forward again, cradling his left shoulder, did she shake herself and move back to his side. “What do you want me to do?”

“Firstly, is it still bleeding?” he asked, craning to look over his shoulder.

“Yes.”

“I have a reason for doing all of this, Alyse. And it wasn’t to hurt you.”

She did her best to ignore the soft words. “What’s second?”

He hesitated. “Clean it off so you can see what you’re doing, then run your fingers around the hole.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I need to know if the ball’s close enough to the surface that you can dig it out.”

And she used to be squeamish at the thought of attending a boxing match.
Steady, Alyse
, she ordered herself. Clearly he had come to find her out of necessity. He had to know that she would be furious with him. Taking a deep breath, she dipped the corner of her washing cloth into the basin and began stroking it gently along his skin.

“The bleeding is slowing, I think,” she observed after a moment.

“Good. If the ball had hit a major blood vessel I’d be dead by now. I don’t think there’s too much damage.”

When she’d cleaned it as best as she could, she set the cloth aside. “I’m going to try to find the ball now,” she announced.

He nodded, his shoulders rising and holding as he took a breath.

Carefully she pressed two fingers together on one side of the wound. “Does that hurt?”

“Yes. Continue.”

“How will I know if I find it?”

“You’ll feel a bump beneath my skin.”

Of course she would. Ninny. She continued around the wound until she pressed just beneath it. “I think I’ve found it,” she exclaimed unsteadily, barely remembering to keep her voice down. Aunt Ernesta slept just below her, after all.

“Good,” he rasped between clenched teeth. “You need to hurry, then, so you can bandage it up. You don’t happen to have any whiskey or brandy up here, do you?”

“Yes, I keep it in my pocket.”

“You’ll need it to clean the knife and the wound.”

Her heart skittered again. “I don’t have a knife, either.”

He reached for the cuff of his right Hessian boot and drew a long, slender blade out from along his calf. “I do.”

Fighting the abrupt urge to panic, Alyse stood again. “There’s brandy in the billiards room. I’ll be back in just a moment.”

“Remember, if you’re caught, we’re both finished.”

Fresh anger brushing through her, she nodded. “I remember.”

As she left her room and then crept down the stairs to the first floor, Alyse reflected that he’d probably made her angry intentionally. Otherwise she would have been terrified, both at the thought of what would happen if Richard caught Phin in her room, and at what she was going to have to do if he didn’t.

Cut someone open. Cut Phin. She closed her eyes for a moment. If it needed to be done, she would do it. There was no one else. And over the past few years she’d learned how to stand on her own two feet. Once she found the brandy decanter she clutched it to her chest and hurried upstairs again.

Back inside her bedchamber she held the knife over her washbasin and splashed brandy over it. Likewise she dashed some onto Phin’s back, holding her breath as he hissed in pain but didn’t lose consciousness.

Alyse knelt behind him, raising up on her knees and putting her left hand on his bare upper arm to steady herself. “Are you ready?” she asked, once he’d told her how to proceed.

“Yes. Do it.”

“Cotton and alcohol,” he pointed out, wiping an unsteady hand across his brow. “You didn’t warn me. And that wasn’t a scream. Trust me on that.”

“Mm. Lean back against the bedpost, and I’ll fetch some bandages.”

So she was still angry with him. He could hardly blame her for that. Sidling backward, he let her guide him back so that the cloth stayed pressed between his shoulder and the oak bedpost. He watched as she found a bedsheet in what looked like a pile of mending, and proceeded to tear it into strips.

She kept mending in her private room. Her life
had
changed. She’d told him that, but seeing spirited Alyse Donnelly reduced to being a glorified maid—it…angered him.

“Explain something to me, Phineas,” she said, kneeling in front of him again. “You’re robbing people. Whatever the devil you think you’re doing for your family, you’re the villain of this piece.” She folded one of the bandages into a square, then put the end of a second strip into his hand. “Hold this.”

“I am not the—Ow.”

Alyse pulled him forward, replacing the cloth with the folded bandage, then pulling the other end of the long strip across the back of his shoulder. “Don’t begin crying now,” she said shortly, taking back the end he’d anchored and tying it across his chest.

She smelled good, of soap and brandy. Now that the ball wasn’t grinding against his shoulder blade any longer and he could actually move without much pain, ignoring her nearly naked presence was becoming more and more difficult. When she leaned against him to wrap another strip of bandage around his back, he couldn’t resist brushing his lips against her ear.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?” He twisted a strand of her light brown hair around his fingers.

“Stop touching me.” She pulled back to eye him. “I’m angry with you.”

“Yes, but I’m grateful to you. Angry or not, you’re risking a great deal by helping me.”

“No one will know. And if you attempt to tell anyone, I’ll say that you cried and sucked on your thumb.”

A chuckle rumbled from his chest. He couldn’t help it. “Be my friend again, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

“When we were friends, you robbed me and pretended to be French. I fail to see the advantage of an alliance.”

“Look more closely.” Phineas took her chin in his fingers, drew her closer, and kissed her softly. “However poorly it ended, I’m glad you didn’t marry Layton,” he murmured, kissing her again, noting that her mouth softened and molded against his. “Given his character, he never deserved you.”

Her fingers tangled into his hair. “You never even met him. You don’t know his character.”

“I know yours. And I know what he did to you.”

“He wasn’t the only one to abandon me.”

Of course she meant him. He took her free hand and placed it on his chest. “Can you feel my heart? You’re the reason it’s beating so hard.”

“Phin.”

“You were always going to marry someone important and fabulously wealthy,” he continued. “I was neither.”

“Why did you leave?” she breathed, her kisses growing in urgency to match his.

“I was never anything,” he replied, shifting sideways so that he could sink down onto the floor, drawing her up across him so he wouldn’t have to stop kissing her. “The last thing my father said to me was that if I didn’t move off the path I was on, the best he could hope for was that I broke my neck before I could hurt anyone else.”

Her fingers paused in their trek across his chest. “He didn’t mean those to be his last words to you, I’m certain. And it was a warning; not a condemnation. Surely you see that.”

“I see it now. Then, I was fairly certain I needed to stay on that very crooked path and do as much damage as possible in whatever time I had.”

“You should have talked to me. We were friends.”

“Your father told me to stay away from you before I dragged you into hell with me.”

She kissed his throat, and he shuddered. This was bad. He needed to leave, before he did what her father had warned him away from and ruined her remaining reputation. And yet to be able to…unburden himself after so many years—he wasn’t certain he could make himself walk away now.

“I would have gone with you into hell,” she whispered.

Wrapping his arms around her, he twisted them so that she lay beneath, looking up at him. He dipped his head and kissed her again, letting her know with his mouth what his body wanted of her. Before she answered, though, he needed to tell her everything. “That day, the day William…” He stopped, clearing his throat. “I came home at midmorning, probably stinking of whiskey and whatever else I’d been doing the night before. William stopped me in the doorway and said he’d allowed me to be stupid long enough.”

“Good for William.”

“Not really. I was still three sheets to the wind, and I told him that the only way I would listen to him was if he could beat me on horseback to the old ruins. Because if I could outrace him drunk, then he couldn’t offer me anything sober. I goaded him into it.”

“It was an accident.”

“No, it wasn’t. I had the lead, and then at the last hundred yards or so he caught up and started to pass me by. I sent my horse into his. They both went down. I kept going until I circled around the ruins. I was taunting him when I came back around, except that he was lying on his back across one of the old masonry stones and he wasn’t moving. I thought I’d killed him.”

The dawning horror in her eyes, the realization that whatever romantic reason she’d made up for his flight was terribly, awfully wrong, was too much. He pulled away from her, climbing stiffly to his feet.

“So now you know. As soon as the doctor said he would live but never walk again, I secured a promise from your father to help manage Quence, packed my things, and left. If I was going to hurt anyone else, it wasn’t going to be someone I cared about.” Carefully he bent down to pick up his shirt.

Behind him, he heard her stand. “You shouldn’t go yet. You need to rest a little. There’s time.”

He shook his head. “I’m not staying. I want you. If I stayed, I would ruin you.”

She yanked on his uninjured arm, turning him to face her again. “I’m already ruined,” she muttered, and pulled his face down to hers again.

Phineas could dispute that, since at the moment she could at least dance at country soirees, but her sweet mouth, her slender body in his arms, were too much too argue against. With a groan he pulled her closer, dropping his shirt again.

He swept his hands down her shoulders, shoving off her dressing robe as he went. His cock ached already, but he ignored it as he lifted her backward onto her bed and followed her, sliding up her body to kiss her again, openmouthed. With the lamp on the floor, their shadows against the far wall looked huge and misshapen, his looming over and consuming hers.

Cupping her left breast through the thin fabric of her night rail, he moaned again as he felt her nipple harden beneath his palm. With swift fingers he undid the two buttons down her breastbone and pulled the material aside to run his hand along her bare, soft skin. Then he licked.

Alyse gasped, writhing beneath him as he tasted her breasts, sucking at her nipples. “Phin,” she breathed, arching her back.

He heard the urgency in her voice, mostly because he felt it himself. It had been weeks since he’d had a woman, but that had nothing to do with this. This was Alyse, and everything else melted away. Raising up onto his knees, he found the bottom hem of her night rail and pushed it up, bending down to follow its rising trail with his lips and his tongue.

Twisting a little, he plied off his boots, using one against the other. When one of them hit the floor, though, Alyse froze. “Quiet,” she hissed, pushing him aside to grab his second boot and lower it carefully.

“Apologies,” he murmured back, pushing her down again and resuming his kisses along her inner thighs. “If it helps, I could hear your aunt snoring very loudly as I came up the stairs.”

“She does sleep soundly,” she said, her voice unsteady and breathy.

The sound of her excitement aroused him further. “I’ll keep that in mind.” As he slipped a finger through her curls and pressed against her, he sucked in a sharp breath. God, she was damp for him. For him. Even knowing what he’d done both ten years ago and to her personally just a few nights ago. “Alyse,” he whispered, replacing his finger with his lips.

She bucked, digging her fingers into his scalp as he tasted her. He sent his free hand up to tease at her breasts again, and she nearly brained him with her heel. Though he’d hate to be found unconscious with his head between her legs, he would have to admit that it was worth the risk.

He crept upward again, pausing at her flat belly to nip at her skin. Finally he pulled the night rail off over her head, so that she lay, naked and breathless, beneath him. “I mean to have you, Alyse Donnelly,” he murmured, unfastening his trousers and shoving them down, watching as her eyes lowered past his hips and widened.

“I want you to have me, Phin Bromley,” she returned, pulling him down over her again.

Phineas settled himself between her thighs, kissed her again, and slowly angled his hips forward. The sensation of entering her hot, tight flesh was nearly enough to send him over the edge, and he fought for a measure of control. Alyse. His Alyse. His friend, and now his lover. And tonight neither of them had to be alone.

Alyse dug the pads of her fingers into his shoulders as he pushed through her barrier. She didn’t cry out, but then Alyse wouldn’t. “Now you’re mine,” he murmured, dipping his head to place another kiss on her achingly soft mouth.

The clutch of her fingers hurt where she neared his wound, but he didn’t care. With a smile Phineas kissed her again. As she relaxed a fraction he moved once more, beginning a slow rhythm against her, inside her. William had said to leave her be. How could he, though, when she was the best part of his memories here?

“Alyse.” Nibbling at her throat, he sped his pace, then slowed again, relishing in her obvious pleasure.

“Phin, Phin, this is too much,” she breathed, arching her back, pressing against him.

“There’s more,” he whispered, deepening his thrusts.

As she gasped something he couldn’t make out, he shifted a little, moving faster when he felt her draw tighter and tighter and then break with a breathless pulsing that pulled him over with her. He convulsed against her, shuddering.

When Alyse could breathe again, all she could do was hold on to Phin as he climaxed inside her and hope that she hadn’t screamed her own release aloud.
Good heavens
.

She didn’t have the words to describe how…wondrous that had felt. And to be with Phin, to feel his desire and his pleasure—it could mean more trouble, worse even than she’d known before, but with his weight on her, her fingers on his skin, she couldn’t regret it. Not now. Not tonight. She could be worried and logical tomorrow.

With a soft sigh Phin kissed her again, then rolled onto his good shoulder so she could curl across his chest. She never wanted him to leave her bed. Alyse ran her fingers lightly over a jagged scar just above his waist on the right side. “What happened to you?” she asked.

“A horse fell on me,” he answered easily. “Broke a few ribs, but it wouldn’t have been so bad except that the fellow panicked and tried to stand up on me.”

“So this is a hoofprint,” she said, tracing the ragged half moon.

“Yes, it is.”

She shifted her attention to the meaty part of his right shoulder. “This looks familiar. How many times have you been shot?”

“Including tonight, three.” He bent his right knee and jabbed a finger into his lower thigh. “Here’s the other one.”

Alyse touched it, feeling the round pucker of flesh, then reached up to run the tip of her forefinger down from his forehead across his eyebrow, and down to his right cheek. “You nearly lost your eye.”

“Very nearly. French officers are good swordsmen.”

His low voice reverberated into her, a private, intimate sensation that she liked very much. How close had he come to dying tonight? How close had she come to never being able to feel this way with him? “Who shot you, Phin?”

He lifted his head to gaze at her. “Are we friends again?”

After this? Only a man would ask such a question. “Yes, we’re friends again.”

“Lord Charles Smythe.”

Alyse gasped. “What? Why would—”

“Because I came upon him removing a pack of wolfhounds from Beaumont’s kennel.”

The implications of what he was saying stunned her. “Beaumont likes to hunt. Why shouldn’t he have hounds?”

“No reason.”

“And what—you were dressed as a highwayman. I would have shot you, as well.” Unless she was too occupied with kissing him, but she didn’t say that aloud.

“That’s good to know,” he said dryly.

“You know what I mean. You’re saying that Lord Charles is responsible for the attack on Quence’s flock of sheep. Why would he do such a thing?”

“I don’t know. Not yet. I intend to find out. Did Smythe have wolfhounds with him when he came down from London?”