Deeply In You (15 page)

Her hand jerked free, her fists landed on her hips, and she glared at him under her hood. “A
what?
You’re going to be unfaithful to me—?”

The hurt in her voice touched his heart. “No, my indignant governess, my business at the brothel has nothing to do with sex. I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“Someone who has wronged me.”

“
Who
is it?”

“Enough questions. Into the carriage, Miss Winsome.”

Black lace was wrapped around the woman’s head like a blindfold, and she was bound hand-and-foot to a metal contraption. The whore twisted her head as a man in a black mask, dressed in the style of a century before, including satin breeches of silver and a frock coat of ice blue, strolled around her flicking a whip.

Grey found he was watching the couple without a spark of arousal. Directed to this room to find the madam, he’d brought Miss Winsome with him. Her eyes were huge and shocked.

“Do you want me to do
that?
Like Lady Montroy and the riding crop?”

Looking around for the madam, he answered, “I said I don’t inflict pain. Ever. We would start by tying you up, my dear. I love to devise complex ways of tying a woman up so her movement teases her nipples and cunny, so her every wriggle brings her close to orgasm. But when it comes to crops or spanking, it would be what you want, what you wish to explore. And I would ensure you find it erotic, not painful.”

She looked up at him, her face partly shielded by her hood. “I don’t know about these scenes, these things. I liked what we did last night.”

“I thought you were ready to agree to my terms.”

“Could we compromise? Sometimes we will play your games, and sometime we will play mine?”

God, she fascinated him. No other woman had tried to negotiate sex with him. He didn’t know what to answer. Deep inside, he wanted to give her what she wanted.

But making love to her the way she wanted—with intimacy, without ropes and crops and games to keep a barrier between them—would make her believe they had love, and he didn’t want to build hopes he would only destroy.

Let her go,
whispered the voice of logic in his head.
You will only hurt her.

That startled him, but he saw it was true. He cared about her—

“You are mine, wench,” the frock-coated man crowed. “Mine to punish as I see fit. Let me give you a taste.”

Grey jerked his head up. He stared at the man’s face. The black mask was a strip of leather molded over his nose, with narrow slits at the eyes. The man’s chiseled jaw and full lips were revealed. The face meant nothing to him. But triumph and arrogance filled the voice. The man laughed as he gave a flick of the whip, and the lash struck the woman’s large, pale rump—a smirking laugh that rose several octaves.

This man was the blackmailer.

Blind rage drove Grey. It would be so easy to grasp the smug, overconfident bastard by his scrawny neck and strangle the life out of him—

He’d taken a step forward without realizing it. The man jerked his head up at Grey’s sudden movement. “Bloody hell,” the blackguard spat. He turned on his heel and ran, pushing through the crowd of men and prostitutes filling the room.

Grey planted Helena against a wall. “Stay there. Do not move until I return for you.”

He took off in pursuit. Chasing a villain through a bondage room proved interesting.

The bastard used his whip to make people scatter. Oddly, people who wanted to be tied up and whipped now retreated from the lash. But as they raced to-and-fro, they got in Grey’s bloody way, and he had to push them over torture racks and whipping benches to clear his path.

He managed to fight his way out of the room to the corridor. Shoving back his hair, he peered in the gloom toward the back of the house.

Ice blue flashed at the door to the servant’s stairs, and Grey sprinted down the hall. A half-naked woman came out of the room, and he had to jump to the side to avoid her, crashing into the wall. Plaster dust fluttered around him, and she hurried to him. “Sirrah, are ye all right?”

“Fine, my dear.” He had to dance around her breasts, for she thrust herself at his chest. Free, he raced for the stairs, pounded up them.

His boots thundered on the wood steps. He rushed out the door onto the second story. Then he heard gasping behind him, and he jerked around. Helena was struggling to rush up the stairs, holding her hems in one gloved hand.

“What are you doing?” he barked. “Stay there.” Why in God’s name had she followed him?

When he turned back to his quarry, he’d lost the man. “Blast.” He ran to the end of the hall and pushed open the two bedchamber doors on either side. In one, a man bellowed, “What in the blazes?” as another man looked up from the same bed. In the other, a woman squealed with shock and fell off the man she rode.

The blackmailer must have cut through a bedchamber to get to a window. It was the only way he could have disappeared so fast.

Behind him, Grey heard whispers of sound: a soft movement of satin, the slight creak of a board. His entire body tensed, and his heart hammered. He knew what it was to be ambushed from behind. To have a hand clamped over his mouth, his hands roughly bound behind his back.

Fighting for calm, he turned and faced the barrel of a pistol.

The frock coated man chuckled gleefully. “Walked right into it, didn’t you, Your Grace?”

Grey folded his arms over his chest. He’d grown up facing threats. “Going to shoot a duke in a whorehouse full of witness, you scum?”

In the dim light, Grey couldn’t distinguish much of the villain’s face. The hair was covered in a powdered white wig. For carnal games, many men came in costume. They dressed as devils, Roman gladiators, and sultans to live out their fantasies and hide their identities. He still couldn’t identify the man, though now he knew where to hunt for this bastard. Assuming he got out of this alive.

Slowly, he stepped closer to the villain.

The pistol jerked. The man’s arm trembled. “Don’t move, Your Grace—”

“Or you’ll shoot your source of income?” Grey growled. “I think not.” Grey took another step, and as he expected from his last two encounters with this scum, the coward retreated. But cowards could do dangerous things when cornered. He couldn’t take the risk that the shaking bugger would pull the trigger.

“Oh, my goodness! Greybrooke!”

The feminine gasp slammed into Grey like a brick. Miss Winsome stood behind the villain at the top of the steps. She clutched the doorframe, frozen. She stared at the pistol, her mouth wide open.

“Get out of here,” he roared, but it was too damned late. She turned to flee, but the blackmailer grabbed her by the arm and jerked her to him. He hauled Miss Winsome like a sack of gravel, yanking her so her back was to his chest and his arm was clamped around her bosom.

Sweat stood out on the blackmailer’s forehead, but his nervousness had gone.

The pistol’s muzzle moved to rest against her temple, an evil, heavy piece of metal pressing to her delicate skin. Grey had never felt so much pounding pressure in his skull. His heart hadn’t raced like this since . . .

Since he’d been a frightened boy. He could handle a threat to himself. But seeing a gun pressed to a woman’s head was almost crippling.

Fighting rising panic, he faced the frock-coated man with feigned control. “Let her go, you bastard. She’s got nothing to do with this. Release her and you will get your foul money.”

A wide grin showed beneath the black mask. “You care about her. That should ensure I get out of here.”

“Put this weapon down at once. There is no need to hurt anyone.” Miss Winsome’s voice wavered, but she issued the command like a governess. Even held tight against the body of an attacker, she fought to be strong. Such courage astounded Grey.

Her wide eyes met his, but she spoke to the blackmailer. “His Grace will let you escape if you put the pistol away and you do not hurt anyone.”

She was concerned about the safety of everyone else. “Listen to her,” Grey snapped.

But the man snarled at him. “I think not. Not when I’m in charge, Your Grace. This is too much bloody fun.”

The blackmailer straightened his arm so the gun aimed at Grey’s heart.

Grey relaxed slightly. Miss Winsome was still a captive, but she wasn’t about to get shot, even by accident.

The blackmailer took several steps back, toward the servants’ stairs. He wouldn’t drag Miss Winsome down them. Would he let her go? One way to assure an escape would be to shoot her.

The man twisted to see how close the stairs were. Grey sprinted, and as the man cursed and corrected his aim on Grey’s chest, Grey grasped Miss Winsome and pulled her free. He pushed her so she was clear of the line of fire. With a cry, she landed on the floor, while Grey waited for the explosion and the sensation of a pistol ball tearing through his body.

Footsteps pounded on the steps.

The man hadn’t fired at him.

Grey was shaking, but he left her on the rug and raced down the stairs in pursuit, reaching the main floor as a pistol shot exploded. Women and men shrieked and moved like panicked sheep, scattering and bleating. Half-naked people ran everywhere, slamming into Grey like a rushing tide. At the back of the house, in a small disused room, he found the frock coat discarded on the floor. The window was open.

He stuck his head out, but the yard behind the house was deserted, the blackmailer gone.

He had to go back to Miss Winsome.

Long strides took Grey through the diminishing crowd. The madam of the house rushed to-and-fro, demanding to know what had happened, begging the men to stay. But a pistol shot meant trouble, and her clients were deserting like scurrying rats.

He sprinted up the narrows stairs, three steps at a time. When he reached the doorway on the upper floor, Miss Winsome was picking herself up, using the wall for support.

Her gold hair had tumbled free, and shimmered down her back. But other than that, she looked collected and in control. How could she after having a gun to her head?

Then she put her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders trembled. She sobbed but wiped angrily at her eyes, as if she could stop crying if she only brushed the tears away fast enough.

Grey’s throat tightened. She could have been killed. Over him.

He reached her, scooping her into his arms.

“What are you doing? Where are you taking me?”

He cradled her against his chest. He had to stop her crying. At least he had to make her forget. In his experience, there was only one way to do it.

“I’m taking you to bed.”

Never had she seen a man look so afraid for her. She hadn’t been carried in a man’s arms before either. Carrying was her duty—cradling a crying child or holding a sleepy one against her shoulder.

Now Helena knew why children wanted to be held. Grey’s arms pressed her against his solid chest, where she felt his pounding heartbeat. With his strong arms enveloping her, and her hand resting lightly on his bulging bicep—the first time she was really
touching
him—she felt secure.

This man, who was supposed to be a traitor to his country, had risked being shot to save her.

She’d fought for calm when the villain had held her hostage. Now all her strength seemed to be dissolving away. She buried her face in the warm crook of Greybrook’s neck. She was all mixed up inside. He was supposed to be wicked, a criminal. Yet he was gentle with children, loving to his sisters, and he’d rescued her.

The duke kicked the front door of the brothel open and swept her down the steps to his carriage. Inside, with the lamps off, he drew her against his side. His large hand skimmed up and down her arm, stroking her. Cuddled close to him, she drank in his enticing male scent—it made her want to put her mouth to his neck and taste his skin. Tentatively, she lifted her hand and let it rest against his chest—

“I’m going to make you forget this,” he growled.

“There’s no harm done.” It came out shakier than she wished. Then she realized . . .

Oh heavens, she wasn’t supposed to
know
he was being blackmailed. Her natural response should be horror. And questions. She sat up. “Who was the man? Why did he attack you? He only pointed the pistol at
me
to frighten you.”

Deep inside, a voice whispered,
Why did it frighten him so much unless he cares?

“A madman, Miss Winsome. I have no idea of his name.”

Trying to look shocked and surprised, she gasped, “But he knew you! How could you not know who this enemy is?”

The glow of a street flare fell in the window, illuminating green eyes and a hard expression. “Do not ask any more questions,” he said coolly. “I want to keep you from danger. Bringing you tonight was a mistake.”

She must be close to learning something, if she could only convince him to confide in her. She snuggled closer, peeling off her gloves. Lifting her bare hand, she ran her fingertips along his jaw, brushing light stubble. “I am not afraid. But I want to know what troubles you.”

He moved her hand from his face. “Why do you want to know, Miss Winsome?”

“I care about you.”

“I suggest you don’t.”

She hadn’t expected that answer. “Then I want to help you.”

Still capturing her hand, he bent to her, kissed her temple, putting warmth where she still felt the cold of the pistol’s muzzle. “You want to help me with my troubles? Then let me tie you to a bed and lick your quim until you scream with ecstasy.”