Anne Stuart (27 page)

She stepped away from him, pulling her black cloak around her. Her hair was blowing in the strong breeze, obscuring her face, which in itself was a blessing.

“
No reason, my lord,” she said in a low voice.

He persisted. “You weren’t, by any chance, thinking of offering me your own myriad charms as a distraction? Granted, the women at Sanderson’s party have a great deal more experience in these matters. They know how to provide a man with exquisite pleasure. But there’s something to be said for the clumsy enthusiasms of youth. Shall I stay?”

“
Stay?” she repeated stupidly.

“
And share your bed?” he said bluntly.

It was unlike him. He wasn’t a blunt man; he seldom said what he meant. For a moment she wondered what he might do if she said yes. It would almost be worth it, to see that cool, distant expression transformed by shock.

Almost, but not quite. “No, thank you,” she said with spurious calm. “I am tired from all this traveling. I’m certain Willie and I will dispose ourselves quite comfortably.”

There was a flicker of something in his eyes, surprise, perhaps even a grudging respect, but it was gone as soon as she saw it. “Not too comfortably, I trust,” he muttered, half to himself. “I’m not surprised you’re tired. You were up late last night, fighting off ruffians, were you not? I won’t offer our dubious hospitality to any of my acquaintances, then. The lodge is rather small, and I’m not convinced they’ll appreciate my noble motives in keeping you away from them. They might decide to sample you themselves and see how disappointing you are. I couldn’t have that.”

She lifted her head, looking at him squarely. “Why not?” she asked.

His smile was icy. “Because I’m saving your maidenhead for Darnley,” he said. “Pleasant dreams, my pet.”

Chapter 15

It was fortunate the hunting lodge was small. While apparently sound enough, it had the musty, unused air of a place long closed up. It took Willie a good deal of effort even to unlock the front door, and the dark, icy interior was far from welcoming.

But Killoran had already ridden off, without a backward glance, and there was no choice but to try to make the place comfortable. Emma did her best not to think of the bizarre household they’d stopped at earlier. If Killoran chose debauchery, she was hardly the one to argue with him. As long as he didn’t drag her with him.

Her body was stiff and aching from the long carriage ride, and also from her tussle on the London streets the night before, and for a moment all she wanted to do was sink into one of the chairs and weep with hunger and weariness and something else she didn’t dare to define.

She didn’t. She leaned her head against the stiff chair, blinking back her tears, and by the time Willie had returned with an armload of dry wood and the food hamper, she’d managed to light several candles. She moved through the place with brisk efficiency while Willie tended to the fires.

The lodge was small and neat, a gentleman’s toy house, though fallen into disuse. Mice had gotten in at some point during the past few years, making themselves a comfortable little nest out of one of the beds, but the other three rooms seemed relatively unscathed. She couldn’t begin to guess which was the master bedroom—all four were small and simple, so she took the least inconspicuous of them, and the one with the sturdiest bed. The one with the unshuttered window near the peak of the roof, through which she could see the moon shining down brightly.

Within an hour the fires were laid and crackling merrily, dispelling the gloom as well as the cold. Emma made a cheerful meal of bread and cheese and hard cider, and Willie managed to pry some of the shutters off the lower windows before retiring to the small stable to sleep with the horses, after quickly refusing her suggestion that he sleep in the warm house.

“
Master wouldn’t like it,” he muttered. “Besides, I’d rather be with the horses, if you don’t mind, miss.”

“
I don’t mind.”

Willie yawned hugely. “Dunno how he can keep going on so little sleep, miss. I’m tired to the bone, I am. I’m not used to being up all night, wandering the streets of Crouch End at the crack of dawn.”

“
Crouch End?” She heard her voice say the words from a distance. “Whyever was his lordship in Crouch End?”

Willie shook his head. “Wanted to see old Skin-and-Bones, he did, though I have no idea why.”

Emma felt the coldness descend, hardening her insides into a solid chunk of ice. She knew who old Skin-and-Bones was. She’d heard some street urchins shout it at her cousin Miriam. “And did he see her?” Her voice was remarkably cool.

“
Stood on her front step, arguing with her at the crack of dawn. I couldn’t hear a word they were saying,” he added, sounding mournful. “In the end she slammed the door in his face. But when he came back to the carriage, he was smiling. You know that smile he has, miss. The kind that could charm a dragon while he cut its throat.”

“
I know that smile,” Emma said.

Her small room was toasty warm from the fire Willie had laid for her. She glanced at the bed. The hunting lodge didn’t seem possessed of bed linens, and Willie had brought the white fur throw from the carriage and set it on the mattress. If she had any sense at all, she’d curl up in it and force herself to sleep.

But she was beyond forcing. She sat in the one chair the room boasted, her back to the moonlight, to the bed, and stared into the fire. She was shaking, yet she knew it wasn’t from cold.

Killoran had a terrifying charm of that there was little doubt. But it was the memory of Cousin Miriam that had sent Emma into a panic. Why would Killoran even know of her existence? Had he been lying to her all this time? Was he not her rescuer at all?

Had he brought her there to die? It was always possible, and she found she no longer cared. She’d trusted him, in an odd sort of way. Knowing that he was a villain, a user, a self-confessed rake and debaucher, she’d still felt an irrational sense of safety with him. Perhaps it was simply because he’d rescued her so many times.

But the time was coming when he wouldn’t rescue her. When he’d throw her to the wolves and watch. She could count on no one but herself, and if she had any sense of self-preservation, she would get away, from this place and most particularly from him.

The more she thought about it, the more determined she was. She’d been mesmerized by Killoran, by his dark green eyes and elegant hands, by his low, seductive voice and wounded heart. But he was doubtless right in saying he had no heart. And the sooner she was away from him, the sooner she could reclaim her own.

The night grew quiet and still around her. The crackle of the fire, mixed with the sound of her even breathing, her determined heartbeat, lulled her into a shallow, fitful sleep.

She dreamed of Killoran. And his deft, elegant hands.

He watched her as she slept. She looked oddly fragile for such a robust creature. Her skin was pale beneath the flame-colored hair, and the clinging black clothes only heightened the stark contrast. She looked almost ethereal, sitting there asleep in the chair.

The room was hot, the dry wood sending out waves of blessed heat. Killoran stripped off his jacket and waistcoat and tossed them across the dusty table, then turned back to her.

There were no other chairs in the room. It didn’t matter. He sank down on his haunches, leaning against the wall, staring at her.

It was a bad sign, his need to get back to her. Almost as bad as his sudden decision to keep her from the debauches of Sanderson’s house party. He didn’t remember feeling particularly protective before in his life. It was a bad sign indeed.

A few hours, or days, on her own at that licentious party would have given her a most enlightening education. She would have learned more about men and their needs, their frailties, than most women learned in a lifetime. The knowledge would have served her well if she’d decided to be a wife or a whore, the two options open to most women.

He’d told himself he was saving her to torment Darnley, but he’d lied. He’d been saving her for his own torment.

Sanderson had brought his remarkable kitchen staff with him, but Killoran had soon discovered he wasn’t interested in food. The claret and brandy had been smuggled from France, and he’d drunk too much, but even that had failed to still the nagging, unsettling feeling that had settled somewhere in the black hole where most people had a heart.

He could have found any number of games with all levels of play, from the green ‘uns ready and willing to be fleeced, to the more expert players who offered him a real challenge. He’d realized he didn’t care.

Even the ripest, most talented of female flesh had failed to entice him. For this particular gathering, Sanderson had imported only the highest level of tarts. Actresses; the demimonde; the occasional masked, bored, aristocratic slut seeking diversion. None of them had moved him.

“
What’s wrong with you, man?” Sanderson had demanded, one hand occupied with a glass of champagne, the other tucked down the front of a spectacularly well-endowed, masked female who Killoran suspected was Countess Olivier. The same woman who’d refused to dance a country dance with a lowly Irish peer, freshly arrived in London so long ago. Killoran’s mouth curled in a cynical smile.

“
And don’t look like that!” Sanderson added, slopping champagne over the countess’s creamy bosom. “You know I hate it when you smile. It’s enough to give a corpse the shivers.”

The countess shrieked. Killoran ignored her, glancing around the crowded, noisy room. “Is Lady Barbara Fitzhugh here tonight?” he asked, casually interested.

“
Babs? No. I couldn’t prevail upon her to join us. Just as well, I think. In the past few weeks she’s proved tiresome. Never up for a bit of sport.” Belatedly Sanderson caught himself. “Beg pardon, old man. I was forgetting that you... that she...”

He floundered, and Killoran let him. So Barbara has passed up the sort of thing she usually pretended to revel in. Interesting. And he could just imagine whose company she was preferring.

“
But what about the gel?” Sanderson was unwise enough to continue. “When I got word that you had decided to join us, you said you were bringing a young woman. Not that most people bring their half sister to this kind of thing, but then, I suspect you’re not like most brothers. A little overfond, don’t you know?” he added with a drunken leer. “Wouldn’t have minded a taste of her myself. Always was partial to tits.”

“
Darling!” the countess protested.

“
I adore you, my sweet,” Sanderson assured her. “I just want to fuck Killoran’s sister as well.”

“
Indeed,” Killoran murmured coolly, wondering why he suddenly wanted to kill a drunken fool like Sanderson. It was a great shame that one of the few rules of society decreed that you couldn’t kill a man who was the worse for drink. He stared at his host. “I’m afraid my sister isn’t available. I’m saving her.”

“
For Darnley or yourself?” Sanderson asked, showing he wasn’t quite as drunk as he’d first appeared. Perhaps he was sober enough to meet him after all, Killoran thought wistfully.

“
Why should you say that?” he inquired. But his host failed to recognize the imminent danger.

“
Everyone knows there’s bad blood between you and Darnley. Has been from time immemorial. Word has it that you despoiled his sister and she took her own life. ‘Course, that doesn’t sound much like the Maude Darnley I remember,” Sanderson added fairly. “She wasn’t the type to throw herself away on... well, you know what I mean, old man. She had a high opinion of herself and her value on the marriage mart. No offense, Killoran,” he said uneasily.

“
None taken,” Killoran returned smoothly, dreaming of pistols. “And if it were true, it doesn’t make Darnley much of a brother, does it? To let me go unpunished.”

“
Darnley’s not much of a human being, if you ask me,” Sanderson said with devastating frankness. “But then, you’re a hard man to kill. No one even dares try anymore.”

“
Oh, they try,” Killoran said in a deceptively tranquil voice. “They just don’t get very far.” Out of the comer of his eye he could see a plump, red-haired woman near the stairs, and he felt a faint flickering of interest that surprised him. He was seldom drawn to whores.

“
Well, find your own pleasure,” Sanderson said grandly. “There’s plenty to be had. At least we won’t be having the pleasure of seeing Jasper Darnley for the next few days. Apparently his stomach ailment has taken a turn for the worse once more.”

“
How sad,” Killoran murmured in dulcet tones. “I believe I heard a rumor to that effect.”

“
I don’t suppose you had anything to do with it?”

And that was why he put up with Sanderson, Killoran reminded himself. Because the man had just a trace more of a brain than most of his ilk.

“
No more than I had to do with his recent absence from society,” he answered truthfully.

Sanderson shivered with melodramatic exaggeration. “Remind me never to offend you, Killoran.”

“
A bit too late for that.”

Sanderson seemed singularly unmoved by the notion. “Go and make yourself pleasant to Harper’s latest trull. The titian-haired beauty you’ve been eyeing so covertly. I gather she’s particularly gifted with the French talent. And you spent a great deal of time in France, did you not?”

He glanced over at the striking creature. She knew perfectly well she was being watched—it was worth her livelihood to notice such things. “I think I will,” Killoran murmured. “Innocence gets to be very boring.”

“
I wouldn’t know,” Sanderson replied with a wicked leer, pouring his champagne over the countess’s lush breast and proceeding to lap it up.

Killoran had no need to approach the woman. She came to him, her lush body swaying with just the right amount of seductiveness. His eyes narrowed as she glided up to him. She was beautiful. Stunningly, spectacularly beautiful, so much so that she even put Emma in the shade. But something wasn’t right.