Deeply In You (30 page)

Goodness, she could make herself come just by moving her head. It was a struggle to
not
make herself climax. But she wanted to make this anticipation last.

That was what Grey did. He seduced her with anticipation. He made her yearn for the future—even just for a few minutes of future when he would do naughty, impossible things and gave her blinding pleasure.

Helena moved, the rope slid, and she sagged onto her arms as a jolt of pleasure shot through her. Her quim began to pulse, and she feared she was going to climax before she wanted. She made desperate noises around the ball—

Grey came to her from behind again. His cock nosed between her nether lips and sank inside her bubbling passage in one swift stroke. She felt his legs rock as he drove deep, as if the sudden engulfing in wet heat had shocked him completely.

His hands rested on her hips, holding her steady. He drew back, bracing her, then thrust deep again. He was holding her up more than he was holding her steady.

She pumped back against him, urging him to please her.

Oh, he did. With thrusts that lifted her off the ground and made her feel the deep penetration of his huge member. With tweaks of her stiff nipples, kisses and bites on her bare shoulder. Steam poured out of her dress. She rocked against him, so close to coming—

She needed this orgasm like she needed air.

Wait. He had not paused to put on a French letter.

Panic came too late. Pleasure burst inside her, taking her on a whirling, wonderful dance. God, it was so good. She wanted to squeal and shriek, but the ball kept her from hollering at the top of her lungs and letting the entire theater know she was coming.

Grey withdrew, and she felt his staff bounce up as it came out.

He hadn’t climaxed. “I want to wait,” he said. “I want to balance on a knife’s edge of orgasm all night, while I pleasure you. Until we have the chance to track down our quarry.”

First he undid the ropes and removed the gag. Then he patted her chest with his handkerchief, drying her dewy perspiration, before cleaning her between her thighs.

She wanted to say something about the French letter, but what could she say? He had promised to look after any children. But he’d said it before finding out the truth.

Still a bit in shock, Helena sank down on a seat. Grey opened the curtains, then sat at her side. He leaned to her, his breath tickling her ear. “I want to keep you as mistress for a lifetime.”

The man who never kept a mistress for more than a month was offering
her
a lifetime.

But she would not have it.

The lights of the house had been turned down, leaving only the burning stage lights to illuminate the actors, and they were in the middle of the play.

After a few moments, she gasped, “It’s a shocking play.”

At her side, Grey laughed gently.

“Well, it is,” she said defensively.

A man dressed as a woman with enormous breasts was cavorting on the stage with a man, fooling the “young buck” into believing he was a wanton lady. He was singing a ribald song about having decided it was time to pluck his “flower.” The young “man” was a girl dressed up, with a codpiece between her thighs that stuck out at least twelve inches.

“It’s meant to be titillating, Helena.”

The young “buck” wore skin-tight breeches that revealed every curve of the actress’s shapely legs. The men in the audience hooted as she approached the edge of the stage. The actress cupped her mouth, as if about to whisper a secret.

“I am Rosalind,” she declared. “It is my intent that the lovely ‘Desiree’ will actually become the bride of the evil guardian who wants to marry me.” Desiree was the man in the woman’s clothing. The evil guardian? Had one come on in the first scene, while Grey had made love to her in that scandalously delicious way?

A chubby servant ran onto the stage from the left, bedraggled clothes wafting around him. He looked to the audience. “Me master’s angry because he broke his favorite whip on me arse. Where should I hide?”

The servant jumped in the air as if he saw a monster chasing him. When he landed, his trousers fell down. Women in the audience screamed, and men roared with mirth.

A tall, cadaverous man stepped out of the shadows on to the stage. The small orchestra played a piece of music that made Helena shiver with apprehension.

The man wore a tall, black hat pulled low over his face and a gentlemen’s clothing. He carried a whip with half the lash broken off.

The servant hauled up his trousers and scuttled off stage, holding them with both hands. The ominous villain strode out to the center. He demanded to know where Rosalind was. The audience booed him.

The villain barked at them all in false rage. He pulled off his hat, but Helena already knew who it would be even before she saw the skull-like face with its jutting cheekbones.

It was the man who had pretended to be Whitehall. She turned to Grey, but she didn’t need to tell him. He was already on his feet and heading for the entry curtain to their both. From Flossie’s description, he had recognized the fiend at once.

“Stay here,” he growled. Then he was gone, the curtain at the back of the box flapping in his wake.

But she couldn’t stay there. Grey was racing in pursuit of a man who might be a murderer. Helena ran after him as wildly as she had pursued Michael in Berkeley Square. Equally as terrified of disaster.

With his long legs, Grey was already nearing the stairs that led from the upper tiers of boxes down to the stage level. Helena sucked in desperate breaths. She couldn’t give up.

The ruby necklace bounced on her chest and hit her chin as she ran. She passed startled footmen who waited by the curtained entrances to the boxes.

She prayed Grey did not do something daring—and crazy—out of anger.

Holding up her skirts, she grasped the banister and rushed down the stairs. As she reached the bottom, she blinked. One brilliant lamp lit the space, and it briefly dazzled her.

There were two corridors. One led to the main entrance of the theater. Down the other, she heard pounding footsteps, and she followed them. They grew fainter—the distance between her and Grey increasing. Curtains stood ahead of her at the end of the corridor. She plunged through into a dark, quiet space. Brightly painted scenery lurked along the wall. She was backstage, in a room used to keep equipment. Ropes lay everywhere, and she looked around wildly for a weapon. Something she could use to protect Grey.

A fake executioner’s axe had been propped against a papier-mâché castle front. It was made of wood, but it weighed a ton. Struggling, she lifted it to her shoulder. Then, wavering with the weight of the wretched axe, she crept through the curtain at the other end.

She stood in another small room filled with scenery, and at that moment the weight of the axe overtaxed her arms. It thudded to the floor in front of her.

While she had no weapon, she certainly had the attention of Whitehall and Grey. They stood near the stack of painted scenes. Grey wore the ruthless expression she had seen on his face when he’d thrown himself at his two armed attackers. His eyes were cold like brittle glass, his mouth distorted in a harsh snarl.

With Grey’s height, broad shoulders, and muscular frame, he would overpower Whitehall easily. But as the men paced around in a circle, she saw why Grey didn’t attack. Whitehall had a pistol.

“The Duke of Greybrooke. What a delight to finally make your acquaintance.” Whitehall’s skull-like face turned to her. “And Miss Winsome. I doubt your improvised weapon would have served you. Stand still, you little tart, and don’t move. So you did become his mistress. I knew such a beautiful and prim creature would turn out to be a whore at heart.”

Helena flinched. She had to
stop
this. She didn’t want Grey to find out who she was like this. “Put down your weapon. You will never get away, and if you take our lives, you will be hanged.”

While Whitehall laughed, Grey swivelled to meet her gaze. “This man is the one who pretended to be an agent of the Crown?”

“Is that what she said? I sent her to spy on you, Your Grace. She went willingly to help me. Even seduced you to do it.”

“You were working with this fiend and with Turner? You lied all along?” Pain glinted in Grey’s eyes.

“No, it was not like that! He is lying. What I told you was the truth.”

Whitehall laughed—a nasty laugh. “So she gave me up, did she?”

“You knew who he was when you heard Flossie’s description,” Grey said softly. “But you said nothing then.”

And that was the truth that damned her.

“I wasn’t sure,” she said, “not until I saw him.”

But she saw Grey flinch. He hadn’t done so when faced with pistols. But he did in the face of her lie. Inside her chest, her heart trembled. She could not stand it any longer. “Grey, I am sorry. I couldn’t tell you the truth. Not all of it. I couldn’t let you find out about my brother—”

“Doesn’t His Grace know that your brother is William Rains, that it was Rains’s debts you’ve been rogering him to pay? He doesn’t know you’re the famous Lady X?” Whitehall asked mockingly.

This was her nightmare. But she knew what the fiend was doing. Distracting them. Getting them to fight together so he could escape. Did that mean he would not shoot Grey?

Grey stared at her, his face white. “Your brother is Rains? That is how he got those stories—from you.”

“No,” she began, but Whitehall laughed.

“Her brother assured me his sister was excellent at ferreting out gossip. And she was. She gave the stories to her brother, and he gave them to me. I gave him instruction to put them in the paper—”

“Shut up,” Grey barked. He glared down his nose at Whitehall, as if he were the one holding the weapon. “I see now this was set up like a play, by you and Richard Turner,” Grey said darkly. “But what was the purpose of this ridiculous farce to have me discredited as a traitor? Why in hell did you murder Lady Blackbriar? I swear I will rip you apart unless you give me the truth.”

“I’m holding the pistol, Your Grace. Turner was a damned fool. He handed over blackmail money to our employer. But I know I can get a fortune out of you, Greybrooke. Wouldn’t you like to keep your little sister’s sins a secret? You wouldn’t want the sordid story of your murdering sister to come out—”

Grey lunged, and Helena screamed, “No, you mustn’t. He’ll shoot you!”

Grey stopped dead, as if frozen in time. Whitehall, shaking, trained the pistol on him. “I want twenty thousand pounds, Your Grace. Or I shoot you now.”

Helena stared at Grey’s back. There was a bulge under his neat-fitting blue coat, at the small of his back. He must have a pistol.

“You can’t pay him, Grey. It will never stop. It would be better to publish the story about Maryanne.” She prayed Grey understood what she was doing.

Whitehall jerked his attention to her. “Shut up, you stupid bitch.” Then Grey’s hand moved like lightning to the back of his coat. Whitehall swung back toward him and pulled the trigger.

A roar almost burst her eardrums. An explosion of smoke filled the small space. A second shot came. Through the billowing pistol smoke, Whitehall stumbled back. The pistol fell from his grasp as his back slammed into the scenery behind him.

Grey held the smooth mahogany handle of a dueling pistol, and black smoke still swirled from the muzzle. His eyes were like ice, his face cold. Whitehall had shot first, but because she had distracted him, his shot must have gone wide.

Grey’s shot had caught Whitehall through the shoulder. The fiend slumped to the ground. “Not going to hang. They won’t hang me. . . .”

Something glinted in Whitehall’s gloved hand.

“Another pistol,” she gasped.

But Whitehall slashed his hand across his own throat in a swift, vicious motion. At once, a dark stain covered his skin and his hand. Dark red blood poured over his arm, down his neck. His body jerked, and he made a horrific gurgling sound, as if drowning.

Dear heaven, he’d slit his throat.

Helena stumbled toward him, her hands outstretched. Could she stop the bleeding?

Grey dragged her back. Not into his arms, but several clumsy feet backward, then he let her go. “He can’t be saved now. It’s too late.”

She knew it. And they didn’t know who had hired him to target Grey. They could guess it was Blackbriar, but they had no proof.

The icy cold in Grey’s expression was gone, replaced by pain. “No wonder Rains knew how to harass Caroline. I let you find out about that damned blackmail, and you used it. You told your brother. No wonder you told me to spare that damned Rains and his newssheet.”

“I did not reveal anything about Lady Blackbriar,” she said softly. “The only thing I told him about was your father’s death. That it was murder, not suicide. I made Will promise not to publish it, but Whitehall forced him to do it. Whitehall threatened to destroy our family. He forced me to keep spying on you or he would have my brother beaten to death by the ruffians who work for gaming hell owners. Both Will and I had to do what he asked to protect our younger sisters. You understand that—how important family is.”

“You told him about Maryanne, about what happened to her.”

“I didn’t, Grey,” she implored. “I swear I did not. I have never told a soul.” That was the truth. She had not even told Will. “I don’t understand how Whitehall, I mean Morse, could know.”

Grey walked away from her. He flung open a black curtain, and she realized this space was separated from the backstage area. The pistol shots had stunned everyone. Actors, actresses, workers of the theater stood motionless, staring in open-mouthed horror. Now they were moving, hurrying toward them. People began to pour through the opening in the curtain. A potbellied man raced forward, pushing his way through. He saw Grey and gasped, “Your Grace!” Nonsensically, he bowed.

Greybrooke.
The whisper rushed over the crowd, as people strained to see the now infamous duke.

“The duke did nothing,” Helena cried. “This man was a villain. He threatened the duke with a pistol, and Greybrooke had to fire to protect himself. Then this man cut his own throat.”