It was then that she realized what Lady Blythe had told her—that Miles had been in the country the night of Lady Penwick’s party. That had been the night Bella was killed.
Could it be true? She had no doubt that Lady Blythe believed it, but had she been deceived by her brother, or was he truly innocent?
Some time later, while cornered by Lady Darlington, Varya spied Miles ducking out of the room. She waited a few moments before excusing herself.
“Forgive me, Lady Darlington,” she interrupted, placing a silencing hand on the matron’s arm, “but I’m afraid I am in need of the ladies’ retiring room. Will you excuse me?”
Without waiting for a reply, she turned and hurried from the room. Pressing her back against the cool plaster of the wall, she peered first to her left and then to her right for any sign of Miles.
In the dim light she barely made out his black-clad form at the other end of the hall. The snowy white of his cuff flashed as he slipped into a room three doors down. If all this intrigue was just a ruse to throw her off her suspicion of him, he was doing a good job.
She had to run to catch up with him. Bunching her skirts up in her fists, she hurried after him, a cacoph
ony of rustling silk and clinking jewelry in her wake. Her mother would have a fit of the vapors if she could see her oldest daughter chasing after a man like a hoyden.
Quickly, she opened the door, cast a quick glance around the darkened hall to make sure no one was watching, and dove inside. Her heart somersaulted with excitement and trepidation. What if she was caught?
Gasping for breath, she leaned back against the door, reluctant to step further inside in case she needed to make a quick escape.
Several wall sconces and a lamp on the desk illuminated the room. The walls and furniture were dark and very masculine, covered in shades of forest green and chocolate brown. It looked like every other gentleman’s study she had ever seen. Was there some kind of code they had to adhere to?
“Lord Wynter?” she whispered, glancing cautiously around the warmly lit room. He was nowhere to be seen.
“Hell and damnation!”
Varya jumped at the muffled oath, and would have fled the room had the marquess not risen from behind the desk. From his disheveled appearance it was clear that he had been
under
the massive thing.
“You frightened me!” She took her hand away from her breast as her heart began to ease its furious pounding.
“
I
frightened
you
?” The incredulity in his tone would have been amusing if not for the menacing scowl on his handsome face. “Might I remind you,
madam, that
you
were the one who barged in here like a pack of wild wolves were snarling at your heels. What the devil are you about?”
His eyebrows were drawn together so tightly that they almost formed a perfect M. Schooling her features to hide her apprehension, Varya replied coolly, “I saw you leave the music room. I assumed you were planning on searching for evidence that might incriminate Lord Pennington. I thought I might offer my assistance.”
There, that hadn’t been so difficult.
“Get out.”
For a moment she was shocked speechless. “I…I beg your pardon?”
He looked at her with eyes that were hooded and wary. “The only assistance you can offer me, madam, is by removing yourself from this room. You were quite clear the other night in your wish to separate your investigation from my own. Please leave.”
Varya was definitely flustered. “Why you insufferable ape! I have as much right as you do to search this room!”
He shrugged. “Then by all means, search.” With that said, he turned his back on her and began peering behind paintings.
She stood her ground, rooted to the carpet by anger and confusion. After telling her to go he was now giving her leave to conduct her own search? Obviously he thought her incapable of finding anything.
“What are you doing?” she demanded as he lifted yet another frame.
“If he’s got a safe, it’s probably hidden behind one
of the paintings or some other inconspicuous place,” he replied coolly, straightening the canvas so that it hung straight.
Varya shrugged and went to the desk.
Miles shot her an impatient glance. “That’s too obvious. You’ll find nothing there.”
But she did. In the lower left-hand drawer, she found a small stack of letters addressed in Bella’s handwriting. Grinning triumphantly, she handed them to a glowering Miles.
“The man’s a simpleton,” he muttered, thumbing through the pile.
Varya chuckled, pleased with herself for having found what he hadn’t. “Obviously his wife never uses this room.”
He surprised her by dividing the pile between them.
“Would you prefer to have them all to yourself?” he asked, arching a russet brow.
She flushed. He had quite a talent for unnerving her. “No. It will be quicker if we both read—that is, if you plan to share your information with me?” At this point she didn’t trust him any more than he trusted her.
His smile was wry. “It will take all my willpower, but I believe I’m up for the task.”
They read in silence, scanning each missive for some clue that might convict Pennington. Once in a while, one of them would read a passage out loud. All they discovered was that Pennington had a voracious sexual appetite that seemed to delight Bella. Varya blushed at some of the scenarios her friend had suggested she and the married lord attempt.
Miles tossed the last letter aside in disgust. Varya couldn’t blame him for being disappointed, but had he really thought it would be so easy to find the murderer?
She refolded the letters and slipped them back into their previous position in the drawer. She sighed as she stood.
“We’ve only just begun looking, my lord. I’m sure we’ll uncover the truth.”
He raked a hand through his hair and met her gaze evenly. “As much as there is no ‘we,’ madam, I hope you’re right. The idea of someone actually getting away with killing Bella makes my gut burn.”
Placing her hand on his sleeve, Varya ignored his dismissal. Every instinct she had was telling her that he was no more capable of harming Bella than she was. The realization that she might have actually killed him shamed her.
“You cared for her deeply, didn’t you?”
He didn’t meet her gaze. Instead, he studied her hand as if he had never seen one before. “Of course I did. I’m not so debauched that I can make love to a woman I don’t like.”
His tone was biting, but she took no offense. She had a feeling his anger had been brought on not by her impertinence, but by the fact that he had been embarrassed by her observation.
“I would hope not,” she replied with mock loftiness. “My opinion of you would fall considerably if you had told me different.”
His mouth twisted sardonically. “As if your opinion of me now is a stellar one.”
She returned his smile. “It’s better than it was the night we met.”
They grinned foolishly at each other. Suddenly, Varya became aware that their bodies were slowly drifting closer together. Her heart began to pound in anticipation. Would he kiss her? Did she even want him to kiss her? Good Lord, she did. What the devil was wrong with her?
He was Bella’s.
The doorknob rattled, causing both of them to jump back.
Her heart now thumping from fear rather than desire, Varya stared wide-eyed at Miles. He stared back, his face white. What were they going to do? How could they possibly explain their presence in Lord Pennington’s private study?
He pointed toward the desk. “Hide!” he whispered.
Varya nodded frantically, hiking up her skirts to run for cover, but at the same time that she moved left, he moved right. They collided at the foot of the sofa, with enough force to knock her well off balance.
Miles grabbed her around the waist. Her hands let go of her skirts and clutched at his shoulders in an effort to steady herself. He took a step forward—
And stepped directly onto the hem on the side of her gown. There was the sound of shredding fabric and gasping breath as Varya toppled to one side. Miles’s foot slipped on the silk and he fell with her. He plunged facefirst into her chest as they landed on the hard cushions.
Varya gasped, her skirts billowing around her
thighs. She grabbed him by the ears, trying to extricate him, even as the door flew open.
Within minutes the entire house was buzzing with the
on dit
that the Marquess of Wynter had been found with his face buried in the splendid bosom of the formerly Elusive Varya.
S
o this was how it felt to be the mistress of the Marquess of Wynter.
Alone. More alone than she had felt in her entire life.
Varya stood on the balcony that adjoined her bedchamber. She lifted her face to the night breeze, sighing as its cool fingers drifted through her hair, lifting the heavy mass from her shoulders. She rested her forearms on the wide balustrade and stared out into the darkness. She desperately wanted a glass of vodka.
She wondered if Miles was drinking himself into a stupor, as he had announced earlier.
“By tomorrow morning the whole town will have you known as my mistress,” he had muttered gruffly as he escorted her from Pennington’s door to her carriage.
“I suppose there are worse things I could be known as,” she replied lightly in an attempt to soften his mood. Did he not realize that she felt just as humiliated as he did? After all, it had been
she
with her skirts bunched up around her waist for all to see—not he.
He only grunted and tossed her rather unceremoniously into her coach without so much as a goodnight. For some reason, his behavior left her feeling rather disappointed.
Their audience had been anything
but
disappointed to find them locked in what appeared to be a passionate embrace. None of them had acted surprised, however, and Varya was beginning to realize that Miles’s reputation had not been exaggerated.
She also realized that her actions were going to greatly change how people treated her from now on. Some had already begun to regard her with thinly disguised amusement or disgust. A few ladies had even fixed her with looks that could only be described as envious. Who could blame them for wanting a man as handsome and virile as Miles?
She sighed. It would appear that she was not as immune to his charms as she would have liked. She would never admit it out loud, but the heaviness of his body on top of hers had left her with a hot, tingly feeling. His back had been hard and solid beneath her hands, and warm through the light wool of his black cutaway. For one split second, she had been tempted not to pull his head away from her breasts but to press him even deeper into her heated flesh.
And then someone had gasped and she realized they had been caught in a
very
compromising position.
“At least we don’t have to explain why we were in the study in the first place,” she later remarked as he dragged her outside.
“Trying to find the positive side, are you?” he asked, sparing her a brief glance.
“Yes.” She had to run to keep up with him. “Don’t you think we should?”
He came to an abrupt stop. “All right. At least they won’t expect us to marry.” It was said with a decided sarcastic edge, but Varya gave a gusty sigh of relief. Obviously, the marquess wasn’t at all accustomed to women
not
wanting to marry him, for he seemed positively startled by her reaction.
After Ivan she had vowed never to marry. There wasn’t a man alive whom she trusted enough to hand over complete control of her life. By law a wife was a man’s property, and he was free to do what he liked with her money or her person. To put herself so directly under any man’s control was to lose her independence, her career, even her own will. In the case of Ivan it might mean losing her life.
A mistress, however, was a different story. A mistress controlled her own money and made her own decisions. If a mistress did not like the way a man touched her, she could leave him. A wife was a prisoner. A mistress was free.
As free as a woman could be nowadays.
Yes, she could live with the stigma of being thought the mistress of Miles Christian. It went against everything she had been brought up to believe, but it would even provide a wonderful cover for them if they chose to continue investigating Bella’s murder together.
It would still be her ruin. Having been raised to guard her virtue, she found the thought was somewhat distressing.
“Oh, Bella,” she whispered to the darkness. “Why did you leave me?”
For years, her higher social status had given her knowledge and experience that Bella could only imagine. The awe in the older girl’s eyes had been the only encouragement Varya needed to spin tale after tale of her opulent life in Russia. It had made the fact that her father had sent her away to school almost bearable.
Only Bella knew how much Varya had wanted her father’s approval. Only Bella knew that Varya had never been able to win it.
When Bella ran away from school to become a singer, it had been Varya she had thanked for giving her a dream to chase. Far from feeling proud, Varya had been horrified that her friend had chosen such a path. It wasn’t until a few years later, when she herself left the school and forced her entourage to make a sojourn into Paris before returning to Russia, that Varya saw just how free her friend was.
At that time, Bella was a rising star, the darling of Paris. Her lover was a handsome French nobleman who treated her like a rare gem. Bella was in control of her life. She conducted herself like a lady, thanks to Varya’s tutelage, and in return, she shared an intimate knowledge of men that had made Varya blush right down to her ankles.
Despite Bella’s words, Varya had been completely unprepared for the Marquess of Wynter and his allure.
How Bella had gushed about the man! How many
letters were nothing but “Miles this” and “Miles that.” She was certain Bella exaggerated the man’s looks and charm. It angered her to see the supremely self-assured Bella make a cake of herself for a man who had no intention of marrying her. And when he broke Bella’s heart, Varya’s opinion slipped lower still.
Regardless of her personal view of the man, he had meant a lot to Bella and vice versa. He was also deadly attractive. How could she find him so decidedly arrogant yet thrill at his very touch? For that’s what the feel of him had been—thrilling. She had actually found herself wondering what it would be like to be his mistress in reality.
She could never betray Bella in such a way. But her friend’s memory aside, Varya had not been brought up to be anything to a man other than a wife.
That would never happen now—not that she ever wished it to.
She glanced past the glass doors to the miniature on top of her dressing table. She didn’t have to see the faces depicted there to know what their reactions to her situation would be.
Her mother, God bless her, would try to understand but would fail. Ana was not the kind of woman to give in to temptation, and she was certainly no match for the will of Vladimir Vasilyevich Ulyanov. No daughter of his would degrade herself by becoming a man’s mistress. Even after almost five years on her own, she didn’t know if she could stand up to Papa. Her hands shook as she imagined her father dragging her back to St. Petersburg, back to Ivan, to a life as little more than a prisoner—if she lived that long.
She forced herself to take several deep, calming breaths.
“Everything is going to be fine. No one is going to hurt you,”
Bella had said when Varya arrived in Paris after that awful night and collapsed sobbing in her arms. Varya forced herself to believe in the words now as she had then.
Bella had coaxed her out of her shell. She’d convinced Varya that isolating herself from society drew more attention than placing herself in the middle of it.
It hadn’t been easy, but Varya had stepped into the spotlight. Bella talked her into accompanying her at a soirée in Paris, and for the first time, Varya became known for her own talent rather than position or wealth. When they arrived in London, Varya began building a career of her own.
With Bella’s help she’d fabricated a background, shrouding herself in enough mystery to make herself intriguing, but not enough to make anyone suspicious. If she’d had any idea just how provocative her “Elusive” persona would become, she might have been tempted to remain hiding in her boudoir. Instead, she embraced that side of herself and the freedom it brought. Still, when she thought of her father or Ivan, she became the scared little girl again.
Ivan was far away, as was her father. Neither one of them could force her to do anything she did not want. Her father didn’t even know if she was still alive, let alone lusting after the man who had broken her best friend’s heart.
Lust was something Varya was not accustomed to.
She had listened to Bella’s shocking tales of sexual adventures with mild curiosity and burning cheeks, achingly aware that she had reached spinsterhood without ever having known the physical pleasure between a man and a woman.
There was no point even thinking about it. Bella had loved Miles, and Varya could never soil her memory by falling into bed with him. She would not be his mistress.
But she could pretend.
She wondered if Miles would follow through with their farce. Whether he liked the idea or not, pretending to be having an
affaire d’amour
gave them the perfect excuse to be in each other’s company, and to be sneaking off together at parties while they searched for clues to the identity of Bella’s killer. If only he would continue to pretend, they could solve the mystery together. After all, the one thing they agreed on was that the murderer had to be brought to justice.
Varya sighed and crawled into bed. She’d have to make Miles realize that having her for a mistress was a good thing.
“They’re all out to get me,” Miles muttered to his unconscious companion. “Every woman I know is part of a great conspiracy to bring me to my knees.”
His mother—and every mama on the marriage mart—urged him to remarry, while Blythe constantly reminded him of his notorious reputation. This, coupled with the memory of Varya’s lush body beneath his, convinced him that the entire female race was hell
bent on driving him either to the altar or to Bedlam.
No one—not even his mother—seemed to comprehend his aversion to marriage. Was he the only one who remembered Charlotte and the circumstances of her death? She had died bringing Miles’s heir into the world. They had all told him it wasn’t his fault, but how could it not be?
The loss of his son had been punishment—he was certain of it. He hadn’t loved Charlotte, not in the way a man should loved his wife. Oh, he knew many ton marriages in which both parties despised each other and still managed to produce healthy children, but his marriage to Charlotte was different. She had loved him, while he had thought of her only as a friend.
How often had she done something just to please him? All of her gowns were in his favorite colors. All their meals were prepared to suit his palate. They attended the plays that he wanted to see, attended the parties he wanted to attend. Never once did Charlotte even attempt to assert her own will.
She had even gotten pregnant when he decided it was time, although he doubted either of them had much control over that.
Pregnancy had been wonderful to Charlotte. She adored every moment of it, and Miles shared her enthusiasm. He wanted a child as badly as she did, but it was not to be. Charlotte died shortly after the midwife took the stillborn infant from her womb.
Perhaps the rules of society and producing an heir led to the death of his wife and son, but he
knew
he was responsible for it. Of that he was certain.
When they put that tiny coffin in the Christian fam
ily crypt, Miles’s soul had gone into darkness with it. There had been no light in his life since.
Until a woman with no last name tried to kill him in the name of friendship.
He swished the brandy around in his glass. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was getting into a situation with Varya he would not be able to easily walk away from. Common sense told him to get out while he still could. His cock urged him not to be so hasty. The very fact that he was listening to the latter left a sour taste in his mouth. He took a deep swallow of brandy to rinse it away.
“How can I possibly be attracted to such a woman?”
His companion made no reply.
Miles tried to think about something other than Varya’s lush form and intoxicating scent—a hint of cloves and roses.
He glanced around him. White’s was fairly crowded, as it usually was after a social event such as Pennington’s. He tried to ignore the conversation and laughter buzzing about the club, but it was difficult.
He
was the main topic of conversation.
By now, the news that the Marquess of Wynter and the Elusive Varya had been discovered in a clandestine embrace in Lord Pennington’s study was spreading like wildfire throughout the ton. Miles had already endured dozens of knowing smirks and nudges from many of his peers.
“Surprised to see you here, Wynter,” Lord Darlington had guffawed, shoving a fat elbow into Miles’s ribs. “Thought you’d have much more
satisfying
sport
than brandy and cards to indulge in tonight.” He and his companions laughed uproariously before scuttling off to find a vacant table.
Miles glared after them, becoming increasingly aware that despite the envious and jealous glances cast in his direction, everyone else was wondering what he was doing there as well.
He wanted to stand up and scream that she wasn’t his mistress, and that he wasn’t the randy goat they all believed him to be. But to do that would require an explanation of why he and Varya had been in Pennington’s study alone. Short of telling the truth, which would more than likely ruin their chances of finding Bella’s killer if he was a member of the aristocracy, Miles couldn’t think of any excuse society would believe over the salacious one they had.
If only the nosy baggage had stayed in the music room where she belonged instead of chasing after him. They wouldn’t be in this situation if she had allowed him to take care of everything. But no, she had to be right there beside him.
“Why couldn’t she just stay out of my way?” he demanded, jabbing his unconscious companion in the head with his forefinger.
Still no reply.
The fact that she had not chosen a lover from her many admirers before this was what had kept Varya a notch above other women of similar professions. Now that she was believed to have succumbed to Miles’s charms, she would be branded a courtesan like so many others.