But first he had to restore the keys he had stolen when he left her to wake alone. He had used her own keys to lock her precious silk store against her. He must go to her and beg her pardon. Until that confession was made, he could never offer her his love or his name.
At least this time he was decently clad, in shirt and breeches. Someone…Suzanne?…had washed the blood out of his shirt and carefully mended the torn cloth.
He took one last look round the silk store and put his hand to the door leading to her bedchamber. Earlier, he had turned the key in the lock and left it there. Even if she had a spare, she would not have been able to use it. The door to the landing was fastened in the same way. As was the outer door to his own bedchamber. His little fortress was impregnable, until he chose to open the gate.
He tapped gently on the communicating door. There was no answer and no sound from Suzanne’s chamber. She was probably still downstairs, seeing to her interminable chores. He would open the door and leave her keys on the dressing table where she was bound to notice them.
He unlocked the door and pushed it open.
She was there! She was sitting demurely on the end of the bed, fully dressed in a gown made high to the neck, and carefully weaving new laces through the eyelets of her damaged corset.
Ben’s heart sank to his boots, but he could not turn back. “Suzanne,” he said softly. When she did not look up, he said her name again. “Suzanne, I have come to return the keys I took, and to ask your pardon.”
She turned to him then. She looked very pale, and quite implacable. “My pardon? For what, may I ask?”
“For everything. I wish to make amends, if you will permit. I took advantage of…”
“You took advantage of my good nature to play a silly practical joke in my silk store. I hope you have restored it to order, sir?”
This was going to be even more difficult than Ben had feared. “Suzanne, I need to…”
She glared at him with the pride of a duchess. “I am Mademoiselle Grolier to you, sir.”
Difficulties, Ben decided on the spot, were invented in order to be overcome. “Mademoiselle Grolier, I have put the store to rights as best I can. Will it please you to come and inspect it?” He stood back, holding the door for her.
She sighed. “Very well.” She put the corset aside and rose. “We need to resolve matters quickly, I agree. Now that you are so much recovered, you will wish to be on your way back to England. At first light.” She stalked into the store and began to rearrange the fabrics, tutting crossly as she worked.
Ben stood back, trying not to laugh. She was like a bad-tempered hen, fluffing out its feathers over its brood, turning round and round, but never quite satisfied that everything was exactly as it was meant to be.
She came to the end of the last shelf of fabrics, close by the main door. As she reached out to unlock it, Ben caught her wrist and spun her round to face him. “Your precious silks are safe, my love. But can you forgive me for everything else?”
“There is nothing else,” she retorted. “Why would I need…?” She broke off and stared at him, her eyes wide. Her body began to sag against the door. Ben had to catch her in his arms to stop her from falling. “What did you call me?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“I called you ‘my love’ which is, to my mind, a great deal preferable to ‘Mademoiselle Grolier.’ You do agree, I hope?” He gave her no chance to answer. He pulled her hard against his body and began to kiss her as if both their lives depended on it. By the time he was satisfied with her response, they were both gasping for breath and Suzanne’s carefully pinned hair had tumbled down on to her shoulders. He lifted one of her curls and began to wind it round his finger. “I take it that is a ‘yes,’ love?”
“I…well, I cannot exactly object to your using such a term of endearment, I suppose. I…”
“You misunderstand me. And wilfully, I do believe.” He laughed down into her eyes. “What I need from you, Mademoiselle Grolier, my sweet love, is your agreement to marry me. As soon as it can be arranged.”
“Marry you?” Her voice cracked. “How can I marry you? I don’t even know your name!”
His name, it appeared, really was Ben. He had told her that, but nothing else. It was too dangerous for her to learn more, he said, while the house was being watched. He might be arrested at any time. What she did not know, she could not betray. Besides, ignorance would help to keep her safe. She could swear, on the family bible if need be, that his true identity was a mystery to her.
His attitude irked her. Marriage, she responded crisply, was out of the question. She was not about to abandon her home and her family for a nameless English spy, no matter how much he pleaded. Spies, she maintained, were men of the lowest class, even if some of them could almost pass for gentlemen.
That comment made Ben laugh a great deal, but he refused to explain why. He simply took her in his arms and kissed her until her head was spinning and her bones were beginning to melt. Then he led her back into her bedchamber, sat her down on her bed and left.
She listened with the greatest care. There was no scrape of a key turning in the lock. Even without trying the connecting door, she understood that the way to his bed was open to her, if she chose to take it.
She could not decide. She hesitated, standing by the door. What if…?
The noise was loud enough to penetrate the outside walls plus two communicating doors. What on earth could be happening? Suzanne flung open her door to the silk store at the same time as Ben opened his own.
“Quick! Come and see!” He pulled her across to the window, though she noted he did not to allow himself to be seen. There was a great deal of commotion below. The watcher was back, but now he seemed to be issuing orders to a party of soldiers, some carrying flambeaux. They had dragged another silk merchant from his house, just three doors away. The merchant’s wife stood in the street, wringing her hands and begging for mercy for her man. Her pleas made no difference. In a matter of minutes, he was manacled and led away. The watcher, looking very pleased with himself, followed in the wake of the soldiers.
“Do we dare to hope that the danger is over?” Suzanne asked.
A strong arm stole round her waist. “I think, my love, that we may indeed dare to hope. For many things.”
Guillaume was so delighted with the latest developments that he was unusually talkative the following morning when Suzanne sent him upstairs with Ben’s hot water. “That old fool was bound to be arrested. Half of Lyons knew where his sympathies lav.”
“Really? When we first saw that spy out there, you all thought he was watching this house. All of a sudden, you’re remarkably well informed.”
The old man grinned. “The way to be well informed, sir, is to frequent certain taverns in this town. Normally I have too many chores to see to in this house, but the mistress said it was vital to the cause. She even gave me silver so that I could buy a drink here and there, where it might help to loosen tongues. It worked, too, though it took hours that I could not really spare.”
She said we would not be disturbed Ben marvelled at Suzanne’s resourcefulness. A spying mission for Guillaume and a quiet house for Suzanne’s tryst. Extremely neat. His love was worthy of a place in the Aikenhead Honours.
Ben decided to voice the question that was preying on his mind. “Mademoiselle Suzanne normally brings up our morning coffee long before this. I hope last night’s disturbance has not upset her?”
Guillaume shook his head. “She’s sitting in her office, as right as nine pence. I have no doubt she’ll be here as soon as she’s read her letter.”
“What letter?” Ben thundered.
Guillaume did not know the identity of the sender. All he could say was that the handwriting was not Marguerite’s.
Ben hastily wiped off the last of the shaving soap. The letter might bring vital intelligence. He must risk going downstairs, even though he might be seen.
Just as he reached the hallway, Suzanne came flying out into the hall. “Oh, Ben, I have such wonderful news. Marguerite and Jacques are married!” She waved her letter. “I don’t understand it all, but that part is beyond doubt. Jacques has taken Marguerite to his family in England.”
Ben twitched the letter out of her fingers and began to read. It was from the curé in Normandy, who wrote in a cryptic style much like Marguerite’s. Marguerite had married her betrothed, he said. Did that mean Jack? Ben supposed it must do. There was a paragraph of pious advice to Suzanne about never allowing her heart to rule her head. That was wise, but a little late now.
The final paragraph was very puzzling. Ben scanned it again. “What on earth does it mean? How can your mama’s assessment of Marguerite’s betrothed have been exactly right? And why should that make him a most suitable husband?”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t understand that, either. Perhaps I should ask Mama? She will have to be told about Marguerite’s marriage, in any case. She will be cross, I dare say, that Jacques did not ask her permission.”
“From Normandy?”
“It is the way things have always been done in our family. Mama thinks she is still entitled to the privileges of rank, even though we…” She stopped short and let out a long, shuddering breath. Her eyes grew round. “I remember now. What Mama said. But surely…? No, it must have been. It was the only time she saw them together.”
Ben took her by the shoulders, as if he were about to shake her. “Suzanne, what on earth are you talking about? You make no sense at all.”
She smiled beatifically. “Tell me, Ben,” she began innocently, “is it true that your Jack is the son of a duke?”
Ben continued stroking the tender skin at the side of his wife’s breast. He seemed intent on rousing her passion yet again. He had cause, she decided. It was, after all, their wedding night.
The new Lady Dexter was not about to succumb without a fight. She tiptoed her fingers lazily across the tops of Ben’s thighs, venturing occasionally on to the lower part of his belly. Never any lower. That would come later, but a little more wifely torture…in the shape of the things she would not do…was a necessary preliminary. He was beginning to writhe against the sheets. It was most gratifying.
“You deceived me.” His voice began normally, but ended in a gasp when Suzanne ran the edge of her fingernail down his hard length.
“I did not, sir! You simply assumed I was a merchant’s daughter. If you had asked me outright, I would have told you my mama is the Marquise de Jerbeaux.” She paused, reflecting on that. “Probably. Besides, my deception is no worse than yours.” This time, she circled his flesh with her fingers and squeezed gently, provoking another gasp of pleasure. “I am an aristocrat’s daughter. You are a viscount’s heir. We love each other to distraction. So I think we are equal, do not you?”
He caught up her hands and rolled her under him so that he could settle into the cradle of her hips. “We are certainly equal, Lady Dexter. In everything, I would say, including…” he raised his hips and pushed deep into her welcoming warmth “…in our ability to satisfy each other.”
The urge was very strong now. He began to move, timing his thrusts to the rhythm of his words. “To satisfy each other, in every…possible…way!”
Dear Reader
If you are new to the Aikenhead Honours, I hope that reading His Silken Seduction has left you eager to discover what went before. At the start of this story, poor Ben was lying hidden in a silk-weaver’s house in Lyons, recovering from a nasty bullet wound. But how did he come to be shot? And why had his comrades left him alone in such a place at such a dangerous time?
The answers are to be found in the Aikenhead Honours…trilogy, three intertwined stories following the exploits of Ben and the other members of the spying ring…Dominic, the Duke of Calder, and his brothers, Lord Leo and Lord Jack Aikenhead.
The acknowledged leader of the Honours is Dominic, the eldest of the three Aikenhead brothers. In the first story, His Cavalry Lady, Dominic is spying on the Russian Emperor during the royal visit to London in the summer of 1814. He strikes up a friendship with Captain Alexei Alexandrov, a decorated Hussar, even though they are on opposing sides. But Dominic is troubled, both by the enigmatic Russian captain and by the memory of a mysterious lady he held in his arms just a few weeks before. She disappeared like smoke, but she haunts him, first as a Frenchwoman and then as a passionate little lady from Scotland. Even with the help of Leo and Jack, Dominic cannot fully resolve the puzzles that beset him. When he is sent to Russia in the wake of the Tsar and his entourage, Dominic has to operate alone. Can he find the answers he is seeking in that alien land?
In Dominic’s absence in Russia, Leo becomes the leader when the Honours are sent to Austria, in His Reluctant Mistress. Their mission takes them to the Congress of Vienna where most of the crowned heads of Europe are assembling to carve up the continent.
Leo uses his reputation as a notorious rake as cover for his spying activities, aided by Jack and Ben. For once, his success with the ladies is not assured…he encounters a woman who is more than a match for him. But there is increasing unrest in France and the Duke of Wellington wants his own spies on the ground there.
The Duke orders the Honours’ forces to be split … Jack and Ben to France, Leo to remain alone in Austria to defend England’s interests. Discover how Leo deals with the intrigue, and how much a rake has to risk to rescue the woman he loves, in this second story.