Never Resist Temptation (11 page)

There was no more excuse for trifling with Jane Castle than there ever had been. She was still his servant. Reluctantly he withdrew his embrace and lifted her from his knees, placing her once more beside him on the bench.

Jane Castle had some explaining to do.

 

Out of the
poêle
, into the
four.

Except the sauté pan had been a freezing nightmare and the oven was a warm, delicious haven. Jacobin would happily have gone on kissing Storrington all night.

Once again he'd come to her rescue. The contrast between the black despair of her situation on the Bellamys' window ledge and the paradise of his embrace banished all fear. All she wanted was to be as close to him as physically possible. Her mind was incapable of considering the consequences of the evening's business. The enchantment of his arms and mouth was everything.

Sadly he didn't feel the same way. She found herself bereft of his heat and unceremoniously dumped onto a cold bench. The sudden physical chill—and the chill of rejection—made her shudder.

He shrugged off his coat and threw it around her.

“You'll need it,” she demurred as he thrust her arms into the sleeves.

“I have my waistcoat,” he said gruffly, and buttoned her up to the chin, like a child. Her hands drowned in
the sleeves of the garment, much too large for her slender figure. The fine wool with its silk lining was soft as a petal and smelled faintly of wood smoke and tobacco and a masculine soap.

He rebuttoned his waistcoat. Heavens, she'd undone it herself. Now that she'd come to her senses she couldn't believe her audacity. She felt deeply humiliated that she'd thrown herself at him but he hadn't wanted her. And just when he'd gallantly saved her from a terrible pickle, instead of letting her tumble to injury or death, or calling the watch, which would have been the sensible thing for a respectable, law-abiding peer to do. And still could.

“Now, Jane Castle.” He was no longer touching her but sat sideways and eyed her severely. As he spoke she could see his breath in the night air and feel it tickling her ear. “Why don't you tell me what you were doing and why I shouldn't turn you right over to the watch?”

But his tone, though stern, was not hostile. She gazed at him, and as far as she could tell in the scanty light, he didn't look unsympathetic. Nor should he, she thought with returning confidence. No one had forced him to come to her aid and no one had forced him to kiss her.

With a touch of rebellious impertinence, she answered his second question with just a hint of a query in her tone. “Because you kissed me?”

She wasn't sure that was strictly correct. She might have kissed him first, but he'd definitely participated.

“True. And I shouldn't have. Once again I must apologize.” He looked grim. “But I must insist on knowing
why I find my pastry cook clinging to the wall of my neighbor's house late at night.”

There wasn't any point to further prevarication.

“My lord,” she began, taking a deep breath and clutching his coat around her. “I am wanted for attempted murder.”

He took this dramatic statement calmly. “I know. I heard the investigation was concentrated on the search for one Jacob Léon, a missing cook.” After a pause for consideration he continued. “I rather think it was a mistake for you to have fled. Even had you lost your position when your sex was revealed, you could doubtless have found a new one. It'll be difficult now to persuade anyone of your innocence. Given tonight's events I can see that you are given to rash impulses.”

Unable to reveal the real reason for her flight, she could hardly argue with his assessment. Ignoring the just accusation of impulsiveness, she stood up and flung out her arms in agitation. Thinking about the injustice of her situation, she didn't have to feign indignation.

“
Exactement
. They won't look for the real villain because they are sure I am guilty. So I have to find out who poisoned Lord Candover. I must help myself.”

“And where, may I ask, does the Bellamy family come in? Do you have some notion that Chauncey Bellamy tried to kill Candover, or perhaps Lady Caroline? God knows her personality is poisonous enough.”

Jacobin waved aside Storrington's note of sarcastic disbelief.

“Yes! And I think I'm right. Three months ago Mr.
Bellamy had a furious quarrel with Candover and threatened to kill him.”

Storrington raised his eyebrows. “And whence came this fascinating information?”

She tapped her nose knowingly. “We servants have our sources.”

He laughed shortly and without humor. “And so you do. And on the basis of this nugget of gossip you decided to burgle Bellamy's house.”

“Yes.”

“You're crazy!” He leaped to his feet and towered over her, a furious glower creasing his forehead. “Do you have any idea what would have happened to you if I hadn't come along and seen you trying to climb in that window?”

“I wasn't climbing in,” she said. “I was leaving, and I would have been perfectly safe if they hadn't left your house so soon. It must have been a dreadfully dull party that the guests left so early. If
I
were a hostess I'd make sure people were enjoying themselves enough to stay till a decent hour.”

He looked ready to burst with irritation. “That's neither here nor there. The fact is, you took an intolerable risk with little or no chance of finding anything.” His voice rose to a shout. “What were you thinking?”

Although when she was sitting in Bellamy's library her own thoughts had been identical, Jacobin was irked by his high-handed attitude, and she refused to give an inch. “As it happens,” she said with a superior smirk, “it was well worth it. I found something very interesting.”

“About Bellamy? He's nothing but a stuffed shirt.”

“What would you think if I told you he lost twenty thousand pounds to Candover at piquet?”

That got his attention. “The devil! Twenty thousand, you say. Are you sure?”

“It was there in his accounts book. Candover. Piquet. Twenty thousand pounds. About three months ago.”

Storrington was now pacing, hands behind his back and his head bowed as though in deep thought.

“It's important, yes?” she pursued. “To lose such a sum must surely be a motive for hatred.”

“Perhaps,” he replied, frowning. “It seems so unlike Bellamy. He's such a model of dreary respectability, and notorious for his disapproval of gambling and cards. I've never seen him play so much as a game of penny whist.”

“So he wanted to keep it a secret! It makes perfect sense.”

Storrington nodded. “He'd certainly want to keep it from his wife. If I'm not mistaken she's the master in that household. It was a brilliant match for him. Her father's the Duke of Wensleydale, and the whole family are ardent evangelicals. Very worthy people of course, supporters of Wilberforce. But not likely to tolerate such a huge slip from the straight and narrow.”

Enthusiastic as she was about this line of reasoning, Jacobin couldn't help seeing a flaw. “If he wanted to keep it from his wife, why would he record it so openly in his accounts?”

“I don't know, but I do believe that Bellamy bears looking at in the Candover matter.”

“Will you help me? Will you tell the Bow Street runners to investigate him?”

“I don't see how I can do that without revealing how you found the information.” He placed a slight stress on the word
you
, a warning that his forbearance toward her ambiguous situation went only so far. “I'll poke about and see what I can find out. At the very least I should be able to discover if he was in Brighton, or anywhere nearby, at the time of the poisoning.”

Jacobin barely refrained from casting her arms round his neck and kissing him again. It was so wonderful to have someone on her side, to feel she wasn't completely alone anymore.

He grinned down at her, his facial expression less guarded than any she'd seen him wear. “I have a feeling I'll regret this,” he said, but his words had no bite. “We'll probably end up together in a cell in Newgate. I just hope they'll allow you to provide the meals.”

She thought she'd melt. Not only was he kind and helpful and a wonderfully timely rescuer of maidens in distress, not only was he madly handsome and an incredible kisser, but he even had a sense of humor.

His next words reminded her that he was also an arrogant, domineering beast. “I'm sending you back to the country tomorrow.”

“No!” she gasped. “I can't find out anything there.”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “You'll be safe there. Anyone might recognize you in town.”

“Not tomorrow!” she begged. “I'm going out with Lucy. We have the evening off.”

“Lucy the housemaid?” he asked carelessly. “I suppose you won't come to much harm with her. Very well, the next day. You can travel down with my baggage. I don't need you here now. I won't be entertaining again until I have guests at Storrington.”

She was glad he'd said that. She'd needed the reminder that to him she belonged firmly in the servants' hall, and his offer of help was likely no more than he'd offer any of his dependents.

Come to think of it, it was all his fault she was in this mess. If he hadn't gambled with her uncle with her person as a stake, she'd be comfortably in the kitchen at Hurst Park, cooking with Jean-Luc, and have never set eyes on him.

L
ucy reverently unfolded the dress from its wrappings. The deep rose silk, the color of raspberries lightened by a modest dollop of rich cream, glowed in the cramped and unadorned attic room that the two young women shared in the Earl of Storrington's London house.

“Are you sure you want to let me wear this?” Jacobin asked. “I can't believe you don't want it yourself.”

It was the most beautiful gown Jacobin had ever seen. That wasn't saying much of course. She'd long since grown out of clothes she'd worn when she and her mother had fled France. Since then the housekeeper at Hurst had eked Jacobin's garments out of the servants' clothing allowance; her dresses had been uniformly practical and just as drab.

Lucy gave her a quizzical look. “As though it would fit me!” she exclaimed. “The cloth is too fine for me to risk altering. Besides, it's not the kind of thing I have any use for. I'm saving it, and one day I'll sell it for a pretty penny.”

Jacobin saw her point. She was a good six inches taller than the diminutive housemaid. Attired in a simple muslin, Lucy looked exactly what she was: a pretty servant—from a superior household, but a servant nonetheless—dressed in her best for an evening out.

“It doesn't look as though it's ever been worn,” Jacobin remarked, holding the dress against her figure and kicking out with one leg to admire the way the fabric draped the limb.

“It never was. Lady Kitty's aunt wouldn't let her wear it. Said it wasn't suitable for a young girl. So she gave it to me.” Lucy had served as Lady Kitty's personal maid when the earl's sister was making her debut.

Jacobin surrendered to temptation. As soon as she put on the gown she saw just why Lady Kitty's chaperone had objected to it. The neckline wasn't indecently low, despite showing more of Jacobin's breasts than she'd ever displayed in her life, nor was the trimming too lavish for a young girl. Aside from some ruching at the bodice and three bands of self-trim around the hem, the dress was quite severely cut. But the way the supple silk clung to her body made it much too sophisticated for an eighteen-year-old.

Odd, really, that she knew that. She must have paid more attention to her mother's lectures than she'd thought. Dreaming of the day she would present her daughter to society, Felicity de Chastelux had tried to prepare Jacobin to be an English debutante—when she could lure her ungrateful daughter from the more lively company of her adored and indulgent father.

“It's beautiful, Lucy. I'll take the greatest care of it.”

The two of them crept down to the spare bedroom to check their toilettes in the long cheval glass. Jacobin thought she looked splendid, from her hair, arranged by Lucy in a cluster of curls on top of her head, to her toes sheathed in brand-new slippers. She'd slipped out to Oxford Street that morning to squander some of her savings on them, together with a pair of silk stockings and—wicked indulgence—silk garters to match the dress.

She couldn't help wishing that Storrington could see her now, dressed neither as a servant nor as a youth. Not the garters of course.

 

It was the third time Anthony had danced with Lavinia Bellamy and he feared she was getting the wrong idea. At a public ball in such a small party there was no help for it. He'd danced twice with her cousin too, once with Kitty, and once, an experience he hoped wouldn't be repeated, with Lady Caroline. Even if the girl weren't young enough to be his daughter and didn't remind him strongly of his niece, Cat, he'd rather be strung up by his thumbs than have Lady Caroline as a mother-in-law.

The Argyll Rooms were packed with a diverse miscellany of high and low society, mostly the latter, and were full to the point of discomfort. It seemed that every denizen of London with a shilling or two to spare had decided to go dancing that night. It was for the most part a well-behaved crowd. Quite dull really, and
not worthy of the revolted diatribe on the distressing habits of the great unwashed he'd had to endure from Lavinia's mother.

Listening to the girl's chatter with half an ear, he was making a turn in the country dance when he almost stopped dead and caused a collision. He glimpsed a vision in deep rose performing the same maneuver in the parallel set.

Recovering his poise, he took advantage of a respite from the demands of the country dance to inspect his impossible pastry cook. Regal as a duchess and as seductive as the highest of flyers, she looked good enough to eat and utterly unlike any servant he'd ever seen.

Where the hell did she get that gown? He'd always found women in red attractive. On Jane Castle that color, whatever it was called, sent a rush of blood to his head and heat to his loins. The way the skirts clung to her body left little more to the imagination than those damn breeches of hers; the upper part of the gown left considerably less. The glorious array of shoulder and bosom made his hands itch to touch, caress, and disrobe…He wondered if he could find an excuse to leave Kitty's dreary party and dance with her. That would give Lady Caroline something to complain about.

Who the devil was she dancing with, anyhow? Some London lover perhaps. He hadn't forgotten she'd told him she'd once been in love and it had ended badly. The man must have been a dolt.

He craned his neck to see her partner and gave an explosion of laughter that made Lavinia, standing deco
rously opposite him in the dance line, scrutinize him sharply.

Jane Castle was dancing with his footman.

Joseph had doubtless been deputed to escort Jane and Lucy the housemaid on their evening jaunt. He was big enough to scare off any predatory attention, and owned an unfailing willingness to perform the kind of mindless errands that made him an exemplar of his position. He'd come to Storrington from Lethbridge House, preferring a bachelor household to the demands of the notoriously lascivious duchess whose advances, Anthony guessed, had completely baffled him. For Joseph had the face and body of an Adonis and the brain of a mentally deficient rabbit.

It was possible that Jane Castle would find Joseph's attributes appealing, but Anthony doubted it. He hoped she was enjoying herself.

 

Jacobin would have preferred a partner with more conversation. On the other hand Joseph accepted her rudimentary dancing skills without comment, reacting to her frequent missteps with his customary witless geniality. She and Lucy—they had giggled hysterically when the butler ordered the footman to escort them to the ball—took turns dancing with him and rolled their eyes at each other between sets. Lucy danced with a few men who presented themselves to the girls, but Jacobin had declined such invitations, not feeling confident enough to entrust herself to an unfamiliar person on the dance floor. When alone she fended off enterpris
ing strangers, surveyed the crowded scene, and kept a mildly anxious eye out for anyone who might recognize her. Unlikely, given her limited acquaintance and the throng of bodies squeezed into the assembly rooms.

She would have liked to have a partner besides the gormless Joseph. Her awkwardness on the dance floor was yet another consequence of her uncle's ill treatment. It was pathetic that she'd reached the age of twenty-three before attending a ball.

She almost vaulted skyward when a hand touched her shoulder.

“Jacobin?” said a familiar voice.

“Edgar!” She sprang around and looked in consternation at her second cousin.

“Jacobin,” he repeated. “Where have you been? I've been so worried about you.”

“What are you doing in London, Edgar?” she demanded warily. “You never come here.”

“I've come to meet your uncle. He's arriving from Brighton tomorrow. But never mind that. Are you well? Where are you living?” His mild face wore a look of grave concern, matching the earnest tone of his interrogation.

Jacobin had nothing against Edgar, but could she trust him? He'd always been pleasant enough to her and done nothing to warrant her dislike. But neither, as far as she knew, had he ever intervened with Candover on her behalf. As Candover's nearest male relation and the steward of the Hurst estate, he lived in the house. But while Jacobin had been confined to the nursery and
then, once she reached adulthood, been left to fend for herself in the household, Edgar had the status of an honored member of the family. He had his own horses and personal servant, dressed well—as she could attest, having helped herself to some of his clothing—and was her uncle's trusted companion and confidant whenever the master was at his country house.

“I'm well,” she said, her tone reserved. “There's no need to worry about me.”

“I thought you'd returned to France with Jean-Luc. What are you doing in London? You shouldn't have left Hurst. It's not safe for a young woman to be out in the world alone.”

That was too much. “So I was better off under the ‘protection' of my uncle?” she inquired sarcastically. “Thank you very much, but I've done better on my own.”

A couple heading for the dance floor jostled her and she moved out of the way. Following, Edgar seized her arm and steered her to the edge of the room. With one hand on the wall behind her, he loomed over her, as much as a bare two-inch advantage in height allowed, his pale eyes close to her face and glinting with sincerity.

“Was it so bad?” he asked. “I don't know why he doesn't like you, but you were at least warm and fed.”

“Yes indeed,” she said angrily, “and a useful stake at cards when he ran short of cash.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You didn't know?” she asked. “Why I ran away?
Candover's so-called protection was to lose me in a card game. I was to be a whore to one of his gambling cronies.” She felt outraged all over again. If Storrington were to appear now she'd give him a chilly reception.

Edgar looked shocked. “You should have come to me for help. I would never have let him use you so.”

“I had no reason to think you'd help. To be blunt, Edgar, you never showed any concern for my position at Hurst. For all I knew, you'd help my uncle tie me up and bundle me into the carriage.”

“I'm hurt you'd think such a thing of me,” he protested, raising a hand to her shoulder. “I'd have protected you in the best way I could. By marrying you.”

Jacobin was astonished. She'd never had any reason to believe Edgar held any tender feelings for her, anything stronger than mild liking. Suspiciously scanning his face, she couldn't detect symptoms of extraordinary passion.

“I still can,” he continued. “Marry me, Jacobin, and I'll look after you forever. You must know how I've felt about you, ever since I first came to Hurst.”

“I don't believe this!”

“Don't you know how beautiful you are? But you never looked at me. Only at Jean-Luc. You preferred a common French cook!”

Jacobin bristled. “Whatever Jean-Luc is, he most certainly isn't common.”

“I'm sorry, Jacobin. It's just that I was always jealous of him. I love you!”

Edgar's declaration, intensely delivered in his reedy
voice, evoked gratitude seasoned with a strong dash of irritation. Deprived of familial affection since her mother's death, Jacobin was touched by her cousin's feelings—if they were genuine. He'd certainly never given her a hint of them before. Or offered her help when she most needed it.

But to be fair, even if he exaggerated when he spoke of love, he offered her something of value: to defy Candover, his patron, to protect a penniless and powerless cousin. She shuddered to think what her uncle would do if Edgar told him of their engagement.

Perhaps die of an apoplexy, she thought with some hope and no charity.

And the thought of Candover dying made her see why Edgar's offer, on the face of it the solution to all her problems, came too late. If she came out of hiding now she'd be instantly arrested and there was nothing he could do about it.

She examined his face, trying to gauge his dependability. His watery blue eyes, rimmed with straw-colored lashes, protruded slightly. She'd never noticed before. And his mouth, pale like the rest of him, was damp and sagged at the corners. His forehead shone with a light film of sweat. A hint of attraction, perhaps lust, glinted in his normally opaque gaze. She thought about kissing him and repressed a shudder. Especially when the vision of another face, another kiss, flashed through her consciousness.

“Will you marry me, Jacobin?” Edgar asked again.

The anxiety in his tone made her feel guilty. But she
found she didn't trust him enough to confide her difficulties. He might believe she was responsible for poisoning her uncle and turn her over to the authorities.

“Thank you, Edgar,” she said gently. “I'm grateful for your affection but I cannot accept your offer.” When he would have protested she laid a discouraging hand on his narrow chest. “I don't feel the same way about you, you see, but I'm too fond of you to expose you to my uncle's wrath. What would you do if he repudiated you? I know you have little fortune of your own.”

“We could manage without him,” he argued. “One day I'll inherit his title and estates, and in the meantime I could bring him round. He's fond of me, you know.”

“I do know, and he must remain that way, for your sake.” Suddenly she felt very alone and blinked back a tear.

“I can't think why you'd want to marry someone who stole your best clothes,” she said with a tremulous attempt at humor. “I apologize for that.”

“That isn't important,” he said. “I'm glad you could make use of them.”

Perhaps he did care for her. It made her all the sorrier that she no longer possessed his fine tailored coat, which she'd lost when she fled over the wall of the Bellamys' garden. When she'd crept out early the next morning, it had disappeared.

“At least let me know where you're living.” He leaned in, crowding her against the wall. Some strong but unreadable emotion fortified his gaze. His body was tense.