The Accidental Courtesan (12 page)

Realizing her servants and the residents on either side of the town house were probably tucked in their beds, leaving her without rescue should a thief be prowling the night, she lifted her skirts and walked briskly back toward the house.

She had managed to get within feet of the kitchen door when she slammed sideways into an immovable object. A large, obviously male object. Arms came up to catch her as she bounced backward and lost her footing. She let out a shriek and flailed her slippered foot. A grunt followed contact with some part of her attacker's leg.

“Let me go,” she cried, and opened her mouth to scream. The scream became a muffled squeal when the man clamped a gloved hand over her mouth. She raised her eyes to get a good look at what was probably the last face she'd ever see.

She slumped with relief.

“Hush,” Gavin whispered. His eyes danced with amusement. “We wouldn't want to awaken the neighbors.”

Noelle's eyes widened, outrage replacing fear. She jerked free and slapped him several times on his hands and arms before settling back to stew.

“How dare you lurk around my garden in the middle of the night? You gave me a fright,” she snapped before casting a glance toward the windows and quieting her voice. If she was discovered trysting with him, no matter how innocent the meeting, she'd be ruined. “I demand you leave at once, lest someone see you.”

His soft chuckle boiled her blood. “You broke into my room first, Milady. I thought it fitting to return the favor.”

Footsteps along the sidewalk beyond the iron fence sent Noelle into a second panic. It was the night watchman taking his nightly stroll about the neighborhood.

She slammed both hands on Gavin's chest, shoved him back into the shadows of a narrow hedge, and pressed one finger to her lips in warning. If he made any sound to expose their whereabouts, she swore to herself that he'd suffer greatly. Thankfully, he remained silent as a tomb, but for the sound of his light breaths near her forehead.

The watchman wandered off, unperturbed.

It took a few deep gulps of air to slow her own breathing enough to allow her to speak. When she did, he faced her full wrath. “I told you I did not break into your room,” she hissed between clenched teeth. “When will you get that through your stubborn head?”

A hand slid up to caress her spine, and he tipped his head to brush his mouth against her temple. “Never.”

Her face burned. If she didn't regain control of herself, and soon, she'd end up bearing the man a passel of bastard children, her life in shambles.

“Clearly you have mistaken me for someone else.” She shook out her skirts and tried not to think about his mouth, his eyes, his finely sculpted muscles; anything that he might use to get into her drawers. “You were very well into your cups and barely standing upright.”

The moment the words left her lips, she let out a gasp and clamped a hand over her mouth, horrified.

A grin tugged the corners of his mouth. “How could you know I'd been drinking if you weren't there, My Lady?” He crossed his arms and leaned back on his heels. “Let us forget the charade and get to the business of you making good on your offer.”

Her fists clenched. “Oh! You are despicable!”

The man had no sense of honor or decorum. His shirt strained over defined, muscled arms. Clearly, wearing a coat wasn't part of the costume of a prowler. She noticed the garden's ancient oak tree was close enough to the house for a climb through her second-floor bedroom window.

She grimaced. “You were plotting to break in and seduce me in my very own bed. Had I not been walking about instead of sleeping, you'd have been free to wander into my room and pounce on me before I could awaken and defend myself.”

Gavin shrugged. “That was not my most pressing reason for coming. However, we can discuss your seduction after I have my questions answered.”

“You are a cad, a bounder,” she whispered angrily.

“I am.” He nodded. “Now that we've settled that matter, my little thief, we have some arrangements to make.” He gave her a thorough once-over. “You broke into my cousin's town house, sneaked into my room, kissed me at least twice, and offered to be my courtesan. I must say, I knew you noble classes like to pretend to be proper while secretly playing lascivious games, but I was quite stunned by the scandalous offer. However, in spite of the unorthodox manner in which the offer was made, I accept.”

Outrage burned through Noelle. “You are without honor, sir.”

He cocked a brow. “I thought the way you vigorously pushed me against the hedge here meant you wanted to consummate our arrangement. After all, I'm stuck with you in this garden until the watchman finishes his rounds, am I not?”

“You know the watchman cannot find us together,” she grumbled. If only she'd thought to bring a pistol when she'd decided to wander around tonight. One shot, and she'd be rid of him for good. “In spite of what may have happened in the past, I have no intention to bed you. Not now, not ever.”

His grin slowly faded, and his eyes narrowed. “Then your presence in my room that night was for a darker purpose.” He locked onto her gaze. “Stealing a very expensive sapphire and diamond necklace, perhaps?”

The words pounded through her head like rifle shots, and it took Noelle a few seconds for the full impact of his comment to take root. He wasn't there to seduce her; he was there to have her arrested! She was bound to spend the rest of her life suffering the horrors of Newgate.

Her legs buckled. Somewhere, from a distant place, she felt herself lifted, carried off the path, and lowered onto a bench. Once she was settled on the damp stone surface, she began to reclaim her senses, and with them, terror.

Gavin sat beside her and looked into her eyes. She gripped his forearm with clawlike nails. “Please,” she whispered, numb to her toes, “do not send me to Newgate.”

Surprise lit his features. “Newgate?”

She felt the sting of hot tears burn her eyes and spill down her cheeks. “The necklace was returned in perfect condition. The theft was a mistake. There isn't a reason to ruin lives.” The words rushed from her unchecked. She lifted his hand and clamped it to her chest. “Please. I will do anything to keep from prison. Anything.”

Desperate, Noelle opened his palm and placed it over her right breast. He jerked it away as if scalded and stood.

Noelle closed her hands over her face and sobbed. The image of living in that dank, rat-infested prison, with guards who abused women without fear of consequence, was too much to bear. She'd beg to be hanged before she'd suffer that fate.

What had begun as a lark, an adventure, a way to help Bliss, had become her darkest nightmare. The shame brought to her family with her arrest would be acute.

The bench moved slightly as Mister Blackwell reclaimed his place beside her. She hardly noticed him as her body shook uncontrollably with wretched despair. “It was a mistake, a stupid mistake,” she sobbed over and over again.

Gavin drew her to his side and settled her in his arms. She clung to him in her misery, wetting his shirtfront, uncaring if he was the key to her downfall. She was falling into a bottomless abyss, and he was the only stable handhold she could cling to.

Though he knew of her deception, he had not brought a magistrate. She understood that much in her befuddled brain. Perhaps she could still dissuade him from his plot if she could stop the flow of tears and figure out a course of seduction.

Unfortunately, the blubbering continued unabated, despite her best efforts to quell her sobs.

 

S
hhh.” : Gavin pressed his mouth against her hair and inhaled her sweet fragrance. She felt so small and fragile as she her sweet fragrance. She felt so small and fragile as she shook uncontrollably and sobbed as if her heart was breaking. It brought out unexpected protective instincts, and he did his best to calm her. “Shhh. You must regain control of yourself lest the watchman hears you and comes to investigate.”

There was no sign she heard him. Concerned, he turned her face so her sobs would be muffled by his chest.

Her reaction to the mention of the necklace had thrown him off balance. He had intended to get to the bottom of the matter, not send her into hysterics. It took a moment to realize, when she mentioned Newgate, that she thought she was about to be arrested. Arrested? What crimes had she possibly committed, outside of breaking into the town house, that could send her to Newgate?

He managed to make out something through her hysterical rambling about returning the necklace and how sorry she was for the trouble. She kept saying “we,” and he sensed she wasn't the thief but perhaps knew the culprit. The missing courtesan, Bliss?

However, the theft of the necklace was the least troubling matter he had to ponder. He'd been attacked over the bauble, and that lifted the crime to another level. There were deeper and more nefarious forces at work than Noelle climbing in a window. Now he had the added worry that somehow his reluctant courtesan might have put herself in danger.

When her crying slowed, then stopped, he tipped her chin up to the lamplight and brushed lingering tears from her cheeks. Her beautiful eyes were so full of despair; he felt guilty, knowing he'd unwittingly been the cause. He cupped her cheek and bent to look into her flushed face.

“I would never send you to Newgate,” he said softly. A beauty like Noelle would be a target for all sorts of debauchery in prison. She wouldn't live a week. “It's no place for a woman.”

“Truly?” she asked with a hiccup.

He nodded. “Truly.”

The tension in her face melted. She let out a soft cry and circled her arms around his neck. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Her soft body ran the length of him, and all sorts of improper reactions filtered through him. And he felt like a cad. She was emotionally frail, and what he wanted very much to do was nuzzle his face in the curve of her neck and run his hands over her perfect figure.

Thankfully, she couldn't read his thoughts.

For the last several days he'd planned to bed her, but not like this. He didn't want her to feel obligated to him, or desperate enough to allow a seduction in order to save herself from prison. When she pulled back and unlocked her hands from his neck, he let her move away. She looked down at her lap as if shamed by her tears and unchecked emotion.

His arms felt bereft without her in them. He cleared his throat, leaned over, and braced his elbows on his thighs. His aching face deserved some justice, and Noelle was the key to lead him to the identity of the culprits. Somehow she'd gotten mixed up with some questionable characters. He found it difficult to believe she could have just stumbled upon them during her daily activities. If it took all night, he'd have his answers.

“Lady Seymour, I think we need to start this tale from the beginning.”

N
oelle slid back on the bench as far as she could go without falling off and clutched her hands tightly in her lap. She looked so morose that Gavin wondered if another bout of tears was looming behind her thick brown lashes.

Thankfully, the dam held. He wasn't entirely sure he could handle a second round of such raw emotion. His mother hadn't been much of a weeper, not even as she lay dying. The only tears she'd shed were for him, as she begged him to take his rightful inheritance and turn his life to one of purpose.

It was because of her, and the sacrifices she'd made, that he'd returned to England and entered Noelle's life. And he still wasn't entirely sure he should be thankful for it.

“I don't understand what you want from me.” She stared down at her feet.

“I want to know the truth. I want to know how the necklace ties in to your little visit to my room.”

Her eyes were wary. Gavin suspected Noelle didn't fully trust him not to have her arrested.

Could she be a thief? Could she be the sort of woman who'd give up respectability to become a courtesan? He didn't think so. Still, there was much about her he didn't know.

Her tightly crossed arms pressed her breasts up to a delicious swell, and those eyes of hers made him wonder if they would change color when she was in the throes of passion.

He cleared his throat. Lusting after her was getting him nowhere. Inhaling her lemon-cinnamon scent mingled with the flowers in the garden was getting him nowhere.

“Since you were in possession of the necklace in order to return it, you must have somehow had the opportunity to steal the piece. Perhaps you should start there.”

Slowly, she nodded and swallowed before speaking. She seemed intently focused on some distant object over his right shoulder, and fingered the folds of her skirt. He took both actions as a clear sign she was about to hand him a steaming pile of horse shit.