The Counterfeit Mistress (6 page)

He stood there, tall, handsome, and formidable, looking at her as if he debated what to do with her. A very different shiver ran through her, and an oddly compelling kind of fear. She tried to think of him as Handsome Stupid Man, but that trick no longer worked to block his dangerous appeal. She knew him too well now to pretend he was stupid.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“I followed your scent.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a neatly folded square of patterned silk. With a flick of his wrist it grew and flowed. He held the shawl to his nose. “Lavender. I caught a whiff of it near the stairs.”

She grabbed the shawl and passed it by her nose. “It does not only smell of lavender.” She picked up more primal odors, lying in a musky depth beneath the floral one. The sweat and fear and, yes, even notes of that day's arousal permeated the silk.

“True. Not only lavender.”

She began folding the shawl again. “I do not mean how did you come up to this chamber. I wonder how you found me in this town and this house.”

“The ladies at your house told me the town. Madame Betrand told me the estate agent. The estate agent's clerk told me the house. So here I am.”

Madame Betrand? Dominique had betrayed her? She would have some strong words for her old friend when she returned to the inn. “Does everyone always tell you what you want?”

“No. You don't.”

She did not respond. Better to try to keep that door closed now.

He paced around the chamber like a man taking its measure. “Sometimes they do not know that they have told me what I want. The estate agent's clerk, for example. He assumed—I have no idea why—that I was your cousin as soon as I asked after you and whether you were using that firm's services. I did not realize you had a cousin in England.”

“I do not know why you followed me at all, and put yourself to such trouble. Surely a viscount has better ways to spend his time.”

He stopped his pacing. “You know why. There is unfinished business between us.”

She hoped he referred to those questions he wanted to ask. Only the rest was in his eyes—the anger at how she had weakened him with the promise of pleasure, then run away. He probably thought she owed him more than words now.

“Why are you letting a house here in Brighton? Are you thinking to live here?”

“I thought I might. I love the sea air.”

“You will have to put off such a change. Later, perhaps. But now—I cannot allow it.”

He had a talent for vexing her. If he thought she was impressed or frightened by his stature and birth, like Dominique or that clerk, he did not know the cut of her. “Perhaps you forget that you are not really my cousin, even if you were mistaken for him today. Nor are you an official of the government.”

“I am a peer. It does not get much more official than that.”

“You cannot tell me where I will live.”

“I just did. You will remain in London for now. Brighton is too inconvenient for me.”

“Inconvenient to this unfinished business you claim we have, you mean.”

“I have my coach here. Come, I will return you to the inn. In the morning I will bring you and your woman back to town.” He stepped toward the door and gestured for her to lead the way out and down.

“I prefer to find my own way to the inn, and to London, but thank you.”

“There is no reason to be afraid. I am not going to impose on you.”

What an odd thing to say. She had not suggested fear of either him or imposition. True, her instincts warned her that it would not be wise to allow this man close proximity, let alone in such privacy. And, she had to admit, he did frighten her a little, in part because of the score he might think he had to settle and in part because his presence filled this large chamber without his appearing to even try to exert any power. She could be excused if she stirred in response to his masculinity too. They had shared a type of intimacy the day she was attacked. She was a normal woman and he a man in whom much simmered below the surface.

“I do not fear you,” she lied. “I merely refuse to be escorted by you. I am accustomed to making my own way. Furthermore, I am not done with my reason for coming to this town, and I intend to finish.”

He moved toward her. Not threatening. Not even unfriendly. She took a step back anyway. Having him near her proved a little intimidating.

“Perhaps you did not understand,” he said, taking the final step that brought him much too close. “You are very finished already. This estate agent will show you no more houses. Nor will the others in Brighton. No one will let to you here, even if you offer to pay double the rent in advance.”

She looked up at the confidence reflected in his eyes. Of course she knew that such men could make others conform to their wishes by simply stating their aristocratic names. She had seen that too often in her life. It was enough to make one sympathize with the revolutionaries in France who had believed in more equality.

Except—looking at him, feeling the command his body and mind sent into the air, she doubted it was only his title that made him so sure his will would be obeyed. He was the sort of man one felt inclined to follow without even knowing his name. That would be useful in war, or any battle. The army had lost a leader when he left it.

She should move away again, so that his aura did not surround her so completely. She should look to the window, her shawl, anywhere except in his eyes. In the very least she needed to respond to his high-handed announcement of how he had removed control of her decisions from her own choices. She must not allow his assumptions to stand unchecked.

Instead she remained in place, feeling small and frail and unexpectedly safe. There could be comfort in his power too, her soul said. He had saved her once, and might again. She need only ask for protection, or invite him to give it.

It required effort to grope her way back to the truth. Lord Kendale did not want to protect her, but to expose her.

She needed to discourage his suspicions, or else convert him into a friend. She doubted she could do the former without telling him every detail of her life from the time she was a child. As for an alliance . . .

A silent thrumming existed between them, full of possibilities. He might be in that robe again, and she in nothing more than a blanket, their mutual awareness of each other was so complete. The chamber echoed with their breaths. A visceral thrill trembled in her full of primal feminine reactions of fear and desire and aching anticipation. She allowed herself to feel what it did to her, so that she would have the courage to be bold once more.

“You do not need to interfere with my plans,” she said while she smiled at him. “I will return to London often after I move here. I will need to bring items to Emma's auction house. I serve as go-between with the recent émigrés from my country. If you ask her, Emma will explain this is true.” She reached up to touch his face. Her fingertips hovered near his skin, trembling. “There will be enough opportunity to finish that business you speak of.”

She did not have to force herself to caress his jaw. She wanted to feel him again and bridge the small distance still between them.

A blur. A shock of movement stole her breath. Suddenly her back pressed the wall. She faced a force of masculine intensity hovering closely, straining against its reins.

He cupped her chin in his hand, firmly. “I will not impose on you, but I'll be damned if I will be your fool again,” he said through clenched teeth.

“A friend, not a fool,” she began to say.

He pressed a hard kiss on her that silenced the words even as they formed.

Did she struggle at all, even instinctively? She doubted she did. She succumbed to the power in that kiss. She hoped that she did not unleash a force larger than she calculated.

He kissed her harder, if that were possible, as if punishing her for the flirtations and teasing. He claimed her mouth possessively. She gasped for breath when she could and an onslaught of sensations poured through her.

Finally he stopped. Still holding her face, he gazed at her with hot eyes. She saw much in him, all combined. Desire for certain. Also curiosity and fury. And, for an instant only, indecision.

“Hell,” he muttered. He pulled her into an embrace and kissed her again.

This was not a gentle or artful lover. To her surprise the tight way he held her, the manner in which he controlled her, made her arousal soar. When he moved his mouth to her neck and chest she stretched her fingers through his hair and held tight, not worrying about being gentle in turn.

His embracing arm almost lifted her off her feet when his kisses and bites moved lower yet, to the top of her breasts. His left arm held her while he caressed her firmly, pressing through her garments all over her body, finally sliding his hand up to her breast.

Against the wall again. His knee pressed between her thighs, high and hard to where she pulsed. It raised her off her feet so she pressed down, deliciously. It felt too good to bear, both easing and deepening the furious need bursting in her. Deliberately, almost cruelly, he used his hands on her breasts, not in admiration but purposeful titillation.

She began losing sense of anything else. Maddened, helpless to the pleasure, she hoped he would strip her. She could barely breathe let alone talk, but she scandalously begged in her mind for him to finish it. She did not care if it was on the bare floor.

He came close. She felt it in him. She saw it through the slits beneath her lowered lids. She waited for him to turn her and lift her skirt. Instead he lifted her whole body in a new embrace. He held her to him, high, so that his mouth could close on her breast. She pressed his head closer yet and lost herself in the exquisite pleasure of his sucks and bites.

Then, suddenly, she felt the floor beneath her feet again, and the wool of his coat against her cheek. His embrace circled her shoulders. No kisses now. No sounds. He held her while her body trembled and punished her for allowing such an incomplete passion to happen.

He released her and stepped away. She snuck a glance at his face, wondering what she would see. Smug satisfaction, that he had now done to her what she had done to him? Disgust, that she so easily allowed such behavior? Calculation, as he plotted how to continue this in a place more conducive to his intentions.

He appeared serious. Thoughtful. Stern, too, but that part was nothing new when it came to her.

Without a word he took her arm and led her to the door. They descended the stairs. He took her arm again, and did not release it until he handed her into his coach out in the street.

He closed the door and looked at her through the window. “The coachman will take you to your inn. Tomorrow morning you will return to London with me. And you will not be moving here to Brighton.”

He walked away in one direction while the coach rolled in the other.

T
wo days later Kendale still could not decide if he had won or lost the skirmish with Marielle that had taken place in the empty house in Brighton. She had returned to London, that was true. It had been a silent, long, and awkward ride. If not for his healing wound he would have ridden down to start with, and ridden back beside a hired coach, but he was not such an idiot as to spend hours in a saddle until the tender mending underway had taken securely.

As for the rest—damned if he knew if he had again been her fool or not. Perhaps he had reacted exactly as she intended. Her lack of resistance suggested as much. He knew Frenchwomen to be very wily in their ways with men. A smart man would have nothing to do with them.

Any chance of choosing that path had now become complicated.

He wanted her. Hell, but she knew it, didn't she? She was probably the enemy, and she would undoubtedly use it against him again and again, as she had already. Stopping himself in that bedchamber had taken more strength of will than he normally exerted these days. He never did with women, that was certain. Whores promised a useful simplicity. One never wondered for days on end about motivations and compromises, the way he did now.

He ruminated over the situation as he left his chambers and rode to Brooks's. He resisted the temptation to ride on to a blue door near the old City wall instead. His mind had taken him there many times since his coach had left Marielle and Dominique there. He had a man watching again, so that he would not use the need to remain aware of her movements as an excuse to pant after her like a randy, green boy.

Southwaite and Ambury sat where he expected them. Southwaite studied a letter in his hand. When he noticed Kendale approaching, he waved it. “News from the coast.”

Kendale kicked out a chair and sank into it. “I am not going this time.”

“How suspicious you are.”

“It is a well-founded suspicion. You sent a message for me to meet you here, and now I learn you received a missive from our friends on the coast. Every time that has happened since your wedding, I have found my ass in a saddle for days. Well, you or Ambury can go this time.”

Ambury dared to look wounded. “We thought you enjoyed a bit of action and getting out of town. I am dismayed that you think we have been taking advantage of you.”

“You know very well that you have been taking advantage of me. And spare me your next breath, on which you will explain how I am much better at dealing with our watchers than either of you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I am not going.”

Ambury glanced at Southwaite, who peered across the top of the letter. “It may actually be worthwhile this time. Two men were found dead in Dover. Frenchmen. They had been knifed.”

Kendale fought the curiosity that spiked on that tidbit. “The local magistrate can handle it.”

“But surely you would want—”

“The truth is I cannot go unless I want to spend days in a coach. I have a wound that is healing and I should not ride that far.” He signaled for one of the club's servants and sent him for some beer.

He returned his attention to the table to find two friends frowning at him.

“A wound? Where? How? When?” Ambury demanded.

“Several days ago. Two days before Southwaite's party.”

“You did not appear in pain from a wound at the party,” Southwaite said.

“To show discomfort would have been rude. It was only a stab to my side. It does not affect my walking or sitting in ways that are normal if I intend to appear such. However, it means I cannot be your lackey and do all the work on the coast for now.”

“He is maintaining an unusually rigid pose right now,” Ambury said to Southwaite. “He did appear to move carefully at the dinner party, now that I think about it.”

“A stab wound is not something one can suffer and show no effects a few days later,” Southwaite said.

“If any man could, it would be him.”

“Perhaps it was a very small stab.”

“I would appreciate if you did not discuss me as if I am not here. It was a good-sized stab, thank you. As for what a man can do after, how would either of you know? You have not been stabbed.”

Southwaite acknowledged that with a chagrined nod. “How did it happen? I am offended that you did not inform me at once.”

Kendale downed some beer. “It was a small skirmish with some thieves in an alley. One had a knife.”

“I trust you laid down information about it.”

“I do not know the thieves, or where they went. I am not in the habit of announcing when I am wounded either.”

“I am shocked that thieves are stabbing lords in London's alleys,” Ambury said. “What were you doing in one in the first place?”

This was why he had not told them about it before. “I was helping a woman who was being attacked.”

Their attentions focused more. Both now appeared truly impressed and shocked. “Zeus, man. How like you to rush in and how unfair to then get stabbed for your bravery. I trust this woman at least laid down information even if you did not. These ruffians must be found and stopped,” Southwaite said.

“I do not know if she did. Perhaps so.” Not damned likely.

“Of course you can't be riding to the coast. Fortunately, this does not require that any of us do so. We will have someone keep eyes on the magistrate, to see if anything is discovered that we need to know.” Southwaite set the letter aside with a certain firmness.

Kendale looked around the chamber to see who else had taken refuge at the club. He saw Penthurst near one wall, reading. Normally when Penthurst came here he enjoyed the company of ministers. It was how he knew so much. Today no such luminaries graced Brooks's.

He jerked a finger in Penthurst's direction. “Did you tell him I was coming, so he could not join you?”

Southwaite flushed. “Not exactly. That is—”

“No one wants to rush matters,” Ambury said, soothingly.

When it came to Penthurst, these two had begun to treat him like a woman. He did not like it.

“Do not deny him on my account. If I do not want his company, I will find yours at another time.”

They mumbled and nodded and looked here and there but not at him. He might be a girl who had been thrown over by His Grace, and had to be handled delicately.

He decided to move the conversation to a more productive topic before he found himself wanting to knock their heads together. “Do any of you know any of the French refugees here in London?”

Southwaite thought the question odd. Ambury found it a welcomed diversion from a growing awkwardness that they all seemed to feel. “I know several of the ladies.”

“You would,” Southwaite muttered.

“I have not spoken to any of them in some time,” Ambury added, pointedly.

“I hope so, or your new wife will cut off your head if not something else,” Southwaite replied, just as firmly.

“Would they receive me if I carried a letter of introduction from you?” Kendale asked.

“You want to call on some French ladies, when you never bother to call on English ones?” Ambury asked.

“I have something I am curious about, and they may be able to enlighten me.”

Again his two friends exchanged meaningful glances. They did that a lot. Did they think he did not notice?

“Who are you after?” Southwaite asked. “Do not deny that you are after someone. We know you too well.”

“I would rather not say at this point. If I am wrong, voicing suspicions would be slanderous.”

Southwaite's brow furrowed. His face turned stern. “Not an English citizen, I trust. I have not forgotten how you turned your sights on Emma. I won't have it, Kendale. I will go to Pitt myself to stop you if you ever subject one of our own to your surveillance.”

Southwaite may never forget about Emma, but it appeared he had already forgotten that the suspicions about her had been proven more than appropriate. It was not something one reminded a friend if one wanted to avoid a duel, however.

“No one who is English,” he reassured.

Ambury called for some paper and a pen and ink. “I will give you their names, then. And a note from me that both introduces you and explains your purpose.”

“Hell, don't explain my purpose. When you do one of your investigations, do you start your conversation by saying,
I am Ambury and despite my title I have a hobby of sticking my nose into others' business and I want to trick you into saying compromising things about my current victim
?”

“I cannot send you there without some explanation. They may assume that you—that is, at least one may think that I have sent you for rather different purposes than you intend.” He stopped writing and looked up. “Unless you would like me to allow that assumption to stand—?”

“No.”

Again they exchanged glances. And this time, little smiles.

“Forgive me,” Ambury said. “Hope springs eternal. You know I believe you need a woman.”

“I have women whenever I want them.”

“You know that I mean for more than ten minutes a fortnight.”

“Ten minutes? Is it only supposed to take that long? If so, one wonders why the whores cry,
More, more, my lord
,
instead of,
Your time is done, you lout
.” He cocked his head, puzzling over it. “Or perhaps it only takes
you
that long. I have said for years now that you need to exercise more, Ambury.”

Southwaite howled. Ambury just stared. “Did you just make a joke, Kendale? Are you unwell? Drunk? I swear he showed some wit just now, Southwaite. My world has suddenly tilted in the least expected way.”

Southwaite caught his breath. “Was it a joke? I assumed he was serious. Now, Kendale, as to knowing any French types—Emma still has some dealings with that woman who dabs at prints, Marielle Lyon. I am sure she would arrange a meeting so that you can ask your questions.”

“Cassandra could too. I don't know why I did not think of her. She did us some good turns not long ago, so I believe you could trust her information.”

“Do you indeed? That is convenient. I would be glad for either of your wives to arrange that Miss Lyon and I meet.”

The conversation moved on to some boring bill being proposed for parliament. Kendale half listened. The ways in which Marielle had inserted herself into the lives of two ladies married to peers of the realm were among the reasons she needed to be stopped.

Soon he took his leave so that his mind would not turn to porridge under the onslaught of political gossip and speculations. While he walked out, a voice hailed him. He turned to see Penthurst beckoning.

Their estrangement was well enough known that heads turned. Annoyed by this public display of a ducal whim, he walked over.

Penthurst barely looked up from his book. He reached in his pocket and withdrew a folded paper. He held it forward. “The man I mentioned. Here is his name. He is out of town for another week, but will receive you upon his return.”

Kendale fingered the paper. There were men who would not hand this over until he either begged or forgave or apologized, and England be damned if their pride interfered with catching a spy. He had to give Penthurst credit for putting country first, much as he did not want to think good of the man.

He stuck the paper in his coat and walked away.

D
ominique fussed with her cap, tweaking its lace this way and that while she peered at her moon face in the looking glass. “I do not see why I must come.”

“I should not go alone. Madame LaTour made that very clear. They will be of the old blood. They will expect me to have a woman with me, if not a male relative,” Marielle said.

She picked through her meager wardrobe. Normally she did not mind wearing these old clothes. She intended her money for a bigger cause than passing fashions. Some of her current garments were Dominique's old dresses from many years ago, and others she had bought used from newly arrived aristocrats. Such women never sold their newer things, however. They would give up the long-waisted dresses of yesteryear, but not anything that might be called à la mode.

She doubted anyone other than Madame LaTour would be so poorly dressed today, however. Before leaving France the women who had come over would have had dresses made and delivered, even if they did not pay for them.

She settled on a dress with lavender flowers sprinkled over a cream background. Its lace displayed very little mending and had kept its freshness. It was her best dress, she supposed, as she slipped it on. Made for a shorter woman, it would hang too high except that she owned no thick petticoats to pouf out the skirt. She took a brush to her unruly hair.

“I do not understand why they cannot come here, as most do,” Dominique said. Dominique did not want to attend this salon. She did not like even leaving the house.

“A whole boat came. There will be many new faces, and the chance to bring Emma many old items to sell. I can hardly ask them to line up in the street here.” For a year now she had served as an agent for Fairbourne's auction house. She convinced the émigrés to put their treasures on consignment there if they wanted to convert the books and jewels and art that they smuggled out of France into money. In return Emma gave her part of Fairbourne's fee. Begun almost by accident, it had turned into an employment that helped feed her savings for her great cause. It also had proven useful for other reasons.

As she queried the newcomers about their possessions in need of sale, she would also converse about other things. News from all over France might come her way today.

If one of this new group had come from the Vendée or a nearby region, she might even learn how things fared there and if Antoine Lamberte still lorded over everyone. She would hope for information that might give her a hint whether the attack on her had been at Lamberte's bidding, and if so how much he knew. She could also discover if he had arranged any executions too.