Too Dangerous For a Lady (29 page)

He shed his waistcoat and cravat. “Care to join me in disrobing, wife?” That came out more brusquely than he'd intended, but she obliged, blushing, eyes bright.

“You'll have to play maid, husband.” She turned her back.

He hadn't noticed before how low the back of her gown was. Never had the hollow of a spine been so alluring. It demanded to be kissed, then licked, and so he did. She inhaled, stretching her neck back, rising up on tiptoe so that his fingers turned clumsy and almost lost their strength. Thank God there were only four hooks.

He slid the gown down her arms. She wriggled to help it slither off onto the carpet, which did nothing for his control. He set to work on her corset laces. He'd heard of men cutting them and had thought it barbaric. Now he cursed the lack of a sharp-enough knife.

He was only half-done when she said, “It's loose enough,” and worked it up and over her head. “There,” she said, turning to him in only her shift. She'd pulled it up in
taking off the corset, but nipples jutting beneath plain cotton were as potent as when exposed. Her breasts needed little help from whalebone to stand full and high. She saw where he was looking and blushed, but then laughed. “I'm glad this isn't our real wedding night.”

“What mad thought's in your head now?” he asked, dragging off his waistcoat.

“I'd have been undressed by my maid. I wouldn't be watching you undress.”

He laughed. Laughing came easily now. As with a maniac? But who the hell cared?

Waistcoat gone. Pantaloons unfastened and off. Drawers and stockings off. Only the shirt left. She was still watching, bright with pleasure.

He picked her up and put her in the bed in her shift, then lay beside her in his shirt and pulled the covers over them.

“I thought of this once,” he said, pulling a remaining pin out of her hair.

“About us together in a bed?”

“That? Frequently.” He fingered her hair around her, finding a few more pins. “In Riverview House, I went first to your bedroom. Your nightgown was over a rack by the fire. I wanted you naked in a bed with me, but I liked the idea of nightgown and nightshirt. It said marriage to me, and permanence, and even growing old together.”

“I like that,” she said, stroking his cheek. “I also like the look of you clean-shaven.”

“Only managed by being shaved just before coming here.”

“I must grow accustomed to whiskers?”

“If you object, I'll razor myself by the hour.”

She chuckled. “I liked your hair longer.”

“It'll grow.”

He took off his shirt then and helped her with her shift, adoring her for the blush she couldn't help and for the smile she meant. He cradled her full, firm breasts. “So beautiful.”

“Am I?”

“Everything about you is beautiful, Hermione. And you are mine.” He kissed her then, doing his best to go slowly.

As before, the passion flared, even more fiercely now for being stirred, then banked, again and again. He fought but lost. No matter. She was as wild for it as he, and wetly ready for him. She flinched when he broke through, and he stilled for as long as he could to let her adjust.

“Perfect,” she breathed, and he felt her inner muscles clench around him. That set him free.

S
he'd unleashed a storm, but she'd always loved storms. Hermione could only match his rhythm, aware of gasping in time to his thrusts and of wanting more and more until thought burned away in sensation and sensation exploded everything for a blinding moment that rippled on and on and then gently down into wonderful heat and sweat.

“No wonder people in hot countries go naked,” she murmured, flexing her fingers on luscious flesh.

“Does that make sense?” he mumbled.

“Skin to skin. Delicious.”

He licked her shoulder. “Mmmmm.”

The most convenient part of him was his ear, so she sucked the lobe. His leg stirred against her and she smiled. “If I were a cat, I'd purr.”

“If you were a cat, I wouldn't be here.”

“Idiot.”

He chuckled.

“This is lovely, too,” she said. “Being here like this, so relaxed, at ease. No wonder people get married.”

“We're not married.”

“Yes, we are. In all ways that matter.”

“We should marry as soon as possible.”

“In case there's a child, yes.”

“You wouldn't marry me otherwise?”

She smiled at the tease, but said, “If we couldn't, it wouldn't bother me as long as we could be like this.”

“Are you always so coolheaded?”

It was her turn to chuckle. “Most people wouldn't think this coolheaded.”

“And earlier, not at all.”

“Should I have been calm?”

He leaned up to kiss her. “Never. You were wonderful, in every way, and I am happier than I've ever been. To have you. To have found you. Again.”

“And again, and again.” She sniffed. “I'm going to cry.”

He kissed her lashes. “Don't, please. I know women talk of tears of joy, but don't.”

She sniffed again, deliciously touched by his distress. “I'll try. But they are tears of joy. I do want us married, child or not. How soon? A license is quick, isn't it? We could marry tomorrow.”

“You wouldn't mind not having your family with you?”

“Not as much as I'd mind waiting, but you're right. We should marry at Selby.”

He sat up against the pillows, taking her with him in his arms. “I want to marry you tomorrow, love, but I can't leave London yet.”

She sighed. “The Frenchwoman and the rest. It's time you told me exactly what's going on.” When he stayed silent, she added, “I'm your wife, Thayne. . . .” She looked up at him. “Should I still call you Thayne?”

“You can call me anything you want, including nodcock when justified.”

She wouldn't be beguiled away from her questions. “You're working for the Home Office and it has something to do with the black, red, and green some people wear. One man I saw wearing those colors was trying to stir sympathy for rebellion, and I suspect a woman I saw in Ardwick was your vile Frenchwoman. Then there's your urgency about
that letter. It was addressed to Sir George Hawkinville, who doesn't sound like the leader of a band of thieves.”

“Too clever for your own good.”

“Better that than stupid. I need to know. I have the right to know.”

He sighed. “You do, and I've never found it easy to keep secrets from you. Impossible now. So here's the truth. I've vowed to prevent bloody revolution coming to Britain, and I work to that end.”

Her heart clenched with fear, but she did her best to hide it. “I suspected as much, but revolution? As in France?”

“I know it can seem unlikely, but unrest seethes everywhere and the London mob explodes at every spark. The situation here is too like the Paris mob a generation ago, ready instantly for mindless violence.”

“Mindless? There's true hardship and injustice.”

“The mob isn't agitating for reformed laws or a lower price of bread. They thirst for violence and destruction as if blood would wash away their pain.”

“There is pain.”

“But that will be eased by reform, not violence.”

So work for reform in safe ways. In Parliament.
He wouldn't say yes. She saw that. Not until the task was finished.

She settled back into his arms, carried into deeper waters than she'd expected. She'd known his enemies were ruthless and violent, but from what she knew of the French revolutionaries, they had been far worse. There was a reason the bloodiest time had been called the Terror.

The Terror that had slaughtered his mother's family, which was why this fight was his crusade.

“But hasn't the mob always been the same way?” she asked. “Wasn't it the Gordon Riots when Parliament was attacked, back in the last century? Nothing came of that in the end.”

He pulled the covers farther up over them. “Touch and
go. Carriages and houses were attacked as well, and prisons broken open, releasing the inmates to do their worst. The army had to be called in, but they killed hundreds of people, many of them innocent bystanders. No one should ever rouse a mob. Someone said that there are three ungovernable forces—torrential flood, wildfire, and a human mob. All three destroy, and indiscriminately.”

“Yet people do rouse them,” she said. “Like Orator Hunt and Arthur Thistlewood.”

“And Julius Waite.”

“Isn't he a moderate?”

He kissed her hair. Such a butterfly touch to create havoc inside. “Only more subtle in how he stokes the fire. He frames action in terms of Magna Carta and the Crusades.”

“Ah. The man I mentioned, who was wearing the black, red, and green—I encountered him at an inn where he was talking about righteous rebellion. He cited Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution, and such, and made rising up against an unjust king seem a virtuous crusade.”

“He'll have been a member of the Three-Banded Brotherhood.”

“What's that?”

“Julius Waite's secret organization that works for revolution. A flag with three bands of color has become popular with those in favor of revolution, hence ‘Three-Banded.'”

“Like the French tricolor,” she said, “but black, red, and green.” She touched his face. “You've had to live within them to oppose them. That must have been hard on your conscience when you planned to destroy them.”

“My conscience wasn't comfortable about killing people in the war. It had to be done.”

“We who stay at home don't think enough of what we ask soldiers to do.”

He turned his head to kiss the palm of her comforting hand. “It's better so.”

“Perhaps, but if we thought on it more, there might be fewer wars.”

“Not as long as war serves some people's purposes, and if evil rises, it must be fought.”

“Your spying days are over now.”

“My adventure in Warrington exposed me. I had no choice.”

She didn't like the tone of that. “You'd rather have carried on?”

He took her hand in his, then kissed her knuckles, then held it against his naked chest. “I was achieving something. I passed on information that helped prevent gatherings from developing into riots, and riots into worse. Once I gained membership of the ruling committee, the Crimson Band, I had access to secret information.”

“If that information leaked, didn't they suspect you?”

“They suspected someone, but I was careful. I only let out the most important details. My main purpose was to find a way to bring them all to court and gallows. The letter that endangered you should have done that if Solange Waite hadn't slipped out of sight.”

She'd thought it was over, but he was still involved. Not as Ned Granger, but still involved, still in danger. It was hard to stay clearheaded when so afraid, but if he was locked to his task, it must be completed quickly.

“The middle-aged Frenchwoman. She's disappeared?”

“Yes, and we don't know what she's up to. There's always a chance that she'll make contact with her husband or one of the others, and so they remain free and watched.”

“Could she not have grown disgusted with her husband's plans and left him?”

“She probably has, but not in the sense you mean. Waite is too slow and cautious for her. She pretends to be a sober matron, but she's a fanatical revolutionary. As a young woman she was an ardent Jacobin. God knows what atrocities she was involved in during the Terror, but I've seen
evidence enough of her heartless resolve. I gained my place in the Crimson Band because she had another man tortured and killed. She thought him a traitor on very skimpy evidence, though she was right.”

“And you still took his place?”

“Danger has never deterred me, Hermione. You should know that.”

But do you like it too much to stop?

She'd envisioned an ordinary life, and when he'd told her about the title, she'd been sure of it. They'd be Lord and Lady Faringay, with an estate in the country and a house in Town, plagued only by the regular challenges of life. But when had he ever known such a life? He'd had a difficult childhood with an unbalanced mother, then gone into the army. From there he'd gone to his dangerous secret work.

If he noticed her silence and read it correctly, he didn't mention it.

“Solange has sent the Boothroyd brothers to threaten men's families if they showed signs of wavering in allegiance. She's clever enough not to apply pressure to the target, but to those he cares for. All sensible villains do the same. Or heroes. I've seen the army use the same measures.”

She pressed her head to his shoulder. “I wish no one was duty-bound to see and do such things.”

“So do I.”

“I still can't believe there's real danger. Not here in Britain. It could never work.”

“The French Revolution didn't work, but think of the destruction and suffering it caused as it careened toward its end. Many of the early leaders had noble aims, but the wildfire consumed them. Most of the royalty and aristocracy who died were no more vile than others, and many were too young to have done anything to deserve death. Perhaps the greatest suffering landed on the weak and powerless, who were trampled, pillaged, and left in the dust, unnamed and
unremembered, and all because of careless trouble-mongering.”

Hermione held him close, tears stinging at his passion for his cause. She felt that foreign suffering and dreaded it coming here, but she shuddered at how Thayne's resolve had entangled him in dark and dangerous ways.

“I was wrong to tell you,” he said. “I've upset you. I never wanted to do that.”

He tried to pull away, but she wouldn't allow it. “I see that you can't abandon the cause, but you must believe that nothing like the French Revolution could happen here. That man talking of Magna Carta and such didn't get much support, and that only mild, and then a trenchant widow poured water all over his ideas. She tangled him up in details of warming pans and the place of the common people in great events so that he ended up befuddled and obliged to toast to the health of Princess Charlotte.”

She won the chuckle she'd hoped for. “I wish I'd been there.”

“So do I. You'd have seen that most people have too much sense.”

“I can't trust to that.”

She recognized defeat. “So what are you doing now?”

“Trying to find Solange Waite before she blows up some part of London, quite possibly Drury Lane while the Regent is attending a play.”

That startled her into sitting up. “Can you be serious?”

“Completely. I know her plans involve gas, and the theater has recently been renovated to use it in all areas. To blow it up and take royalty and any number of other important people with it is exactly the sort of grand gesture she'd aim for.”

She'd never expected such a precise and perilous plot. Of course he'd risk anything to prevent it. She should feel the same way, but she'd rather see the Regent blown up than him.

As if he could read her mind, he laid his head against hers. “Don't try to weaken me, love. You might succeed.”

“I've suffered your death once. I can't bear to do it again.”

“I can only be careful. I can't draw back.”

Why couldn't she have fallen in love with a comfortable, hearth cat of a man? She loved Thayne, however, and she knew what she must do. “Then tell me everything. Perhaps I can help.”

“Jupiter, I'd forgotten. Perhaps you can. Can you draw?”

She was bemused to be plunged into the mundane. “Anyone can draw.”

“I can't. I was never taught, but perhaps it wouldn't have helped. Some people can make a sketch of a person recognizable. My attempts look like nothing human. Can you better that?”

“I suppose so, but I'm no gifted artist. What do you need me to do?”

“You're one of the few people we can trust who've seen Nathan Boothroyd. Can you attempt his likeness?”

She couldn't help but shiver. “I remember him all too clearly, but whether I can capture that from memory . . . It's not like attempting a portrait of a sitter.”

“Will you try? We're trying to draw out Seth Boothroyd by posting requests for help in identifying his brother's body, which is in Chester. They're alike, remember. We've had no luck so far, but if we could display a picture, Seth Boothroyd might come forward. If not, somebody might report seeing such a man in London. Either way, we'll have found Seth and can follow him to Solange and Isaac.”

“That's ingenious.”

“We had the idea because the Three-Banded Brotherhood have a sketch of me. Or rather, of Granger.”

“They're
hunting
you? Dear heaven. That's why you had your hair cut short. It's not much of a disguise.”

He kissed her forehead. “The ‘disguise' is mostly my being fashionable Lord Faringay. Who would assume that transformation?”

“All the same, you're in danger at every moment. I can't bear it.”

“You have to.”