London's Last True Scoundrel (30 page)

A soft snore rose to greet them.

“She’s asleep,” said Honey, blinking. “Good Gracious, how could anyone take a nap in the middle of a soiree?”

“Well, it is past midnight,” said Davenport. “Perhaps the lady is exhausted from the rigors of the day.”

He thought it best not to disillusion the poor girl. Honey would take a pet if she knew Mrs. Walker was sozzled. Then she’d fall into another fit of despondency about the vagaries of her relatives. He didn’t like it when she did that.

“Ma’am?” said Honey. “Mrs. Walker?”

The lady opened her eyes, blinked, then closed them again. With a vague bat of her hand, she slurred, “Go away.”

“Oh, dear Heaven, she is
intoxicated
!” Honey’s voice rose on the last word, making her clap her hand to her mouth and glance around to see if anyone had heard.

Fortunately, no one paid the least heed to them. They stood in a small, shadowy alcove flanked by potted palms. The perfect place for a lovers’ tryst, in fact. Davenport wished Mrs. Walker far away.

“Best leave her be,” he suggested, offering his arm. “I’ll escort you home if you like.”

Instead of taking his arm, Honey gripped his wrist in a determined hold. “We cannot leave her. What if someone else discovers her like this? What if Lady Arden or the duke … Oh, good Heavens, how awkward that would be.”

Releasing him, she bent over the lady and patted her cheek. “Mrs. Walker, it is time to go home.”

The hand that clutched her glass shot up in the air, spilling the remnants of champagne. “Brrring me another!”

“You have had quite enough champagne, I should think,” said Honey tartly, trying to pry the glass free of those clutching fingers.

“Perhaps you ought to leave this to me, Honey,” said Davenport, eyeing the rising tide of pink in her cheeks. Once she got her back up there was no saying what she’d do.

She lifted her chin, a militant sparkle in her eye. “Mrs. Walker is my kinswoman and my responsibility, not yours.” Sparing him a glance, she added, “Would you be so good as to procure me a glass of water, my lord?”

“Of course.” He went in search of a footman, thinking that a pot of strong coffee would be more beneficial to Mrs. Walker at this moment. Or had Honey sent him off as an excuse to be rid of him while she used some unorthodox ruse to sober up her relative? She must have gained quite a deal of experience with her brothers over the years. He found himself curious as to her methods.

Upon his return, however, Honey was no closer to waking Mrs. Walker than she’d been before. She took the glass with a murmur of thanks and sipped it. Then she squared her shoulders, marched over to her chaperone, and dashed the remaining contents of the glass in her face.

Mrs. Walker came to life as if woken from the dead, gasping and whooping. Davenport winced with fellow feeling. He’d received similar treatment that morning at the Grange.

“There.” Honey set down the vessel, took her chaperone’s damp face between her hands, and spoke with a cut-glass clarity designed to penetrate the fog surrounding Mrs. Walker’s brain.

“Mrs. Walker, we must go home now. You are going to get up and walk with us through the salon, into the hall, and out of the front door without speaking, stumbling, or casting up your accounts on someone’s shoes. Now. Do you think you can you stand?”

Mrs. Walker’s head bobbled.

Taking that as an affirmative, Honey nodded also and expelled a forceful breath. “Right. Lord Davenport, please take Mrs. Walker’s other arm, if you will be so good.”

Between them, they helped the chaperone up. She reeled a little and Davenport feared for his footwear at one point, but once she had her balance Mrs. Walker became a trifle more cooperative.

When they reached the hall, Davenport called for Montford’s carriage to be brought.

“But won’t the duke need his carriage?” said Honey.

“It will return in plenty of time for him, never fear,” said Davenport. He planned to take Honey home in his own carriage and he had no intention of sharing that journey with a lady who was three sheets to the wind.

“Leave her to me now,” he said to Honey. “You go and make your excuses to Lady Arden. I’ll see that Mrs. Walker is helped to the carriage.”

“Yes. Quite.” For a moment, those white teeth worried at her underlip. Then she squared her shoulders. “I’ll say she’s been taken ill.”

Watching her hurry off, Davenport had to pause to admire the self-possession that saw her sobering up an inebriated chaperone before confronting her rather daunting hostess. He only hoped her ladyship was as favorably impressed with his protégée as he was. Lady Arden’s support could mean the difference between social success and failure.

Mrs. Walker leaned heavily against him and muttered something into his lapel. He blew a waving ostrich plume from her coiffure out of his face and grimaced as he steadied her and maneuvered her to the door. He’d been an idiot to believe dressing Mrs. Walker would solve Hilary’s problem. Fine feathers did not necessarily make fine birds. Not when the bird in question drank like a fish, at any rate.

Having deposited the lady in the ducal carriage and sent her home, he girded his loins and went to hear the verdict. The Duke of Montford and Lady Arden were powerful players in the Beau Monde. Their support was critical to Honey’s success.

Ruefully he admitted Honey had been right to spurn his suggestion of a quick tumble upstairs. The mere suggestion showed a lack of respect he hadn’t felt or intended.

She’d managed to work her way under his skin in the most baffling manner. So much for being the logical scientist. His reactions to her seemed to bypass his brain.

Seeing that Honey was engaged with his cousins at present, he moved to where Lady Arden and Montford stood together.

Lady Arden, commanding in bronze satin, greeted him with, “A very pretty-behaved girl. You are to be congratulated, Davenport.”

“I confess myself wholly taken by surprise,” Montford said. “That is not to say a Westruther couldn’t look a great deal higher for a wife, but…”

The duke spread his hands in an eloquent gesture. The unspoken sentiment that Honey was better than an actress or a tavern wench or, even worse, Davenport’s cousin Bertram stepping into his shoes hovered in the air.

It helped when people had only the lowest expectations. One could rarely disappoint them.

“We positively must secure Almack’s vouchers for Miss deVere,” said Lady Arden.

Montford raised his eyebrows. “You aim high, my dear.”

The lady smiled serenely. “It will be a welcome challenge. Oh, I’m not saying it won’t be difficult, but I shall endeavor. Bring Miss deVere to call on me tomorrow, Jonathon, and we’ll plan our strategy.”

*   *   *

Davenport handed Honey into his carriage, which he’d managed to have brought around before Lydgate could again commandeer it. “I sent Mrs. Walker home by herself,” he explained as the door shut behind them with a decided snap. “I want to talk to you.”

“Then you did wrong, sir.” Her breathing came faster. His gaze dropped to the tops of her breasts, so enticingly displayed by her new gown. “What do you have to say to me that cannot be said in front of Mrs. Walker?”

“Only this,” he said huskily. He pulled her to him and kissed her.

He’d expected protests and recriminations, but her hand settled on his coat lapel, then gripped it, drawing him closer.

A renewed passion surged within him at this encouragement. He sank into her, pushing her back against the velvet cushions in the corner of the banquette seat.

Her mouth was like warm, wet silk, clinging to his, sliding against his, giving back everything he wanted and more than he’d expected.

She was such an innocent and he was a bad, bad man to do this to her in a moving carriage with her house a short distance away. Yet he couldn’t stop himself any more than he could have stopped a comet hurtling through the sky.

The carriage halted far too soon. He lifted his head to listen. They weren’t at Half Moon Street yet, surely.

Honey’s labored breathing beneath him made him look down at her. She was all wild-eyed and soft lipped from his kisses. A rosy flush stained her delicious skin from those pretty breasts to the roots of her badly arranged hair.

“I adore you,” he breathed.

Her eyes glowed like stars; then her lashes lowered with unconscious coquettishness.

The carriage still wasn’t moving, so he reached over to lift the blind and look out of the window. A snarl of traffic had halted them. Apparently many of Lady Arden’s guests had left at the same time and now there was nowhere to move until the bottleneck at the end of the street dispersed.

He let the shade fall shut.

“It appears our carriage ride will take longer than I’d thought.”

*   *   *

Dazed, Hilary had no time to reflect or puzzle out what he meant by the comment. He shifted to sit beside her, scooped her up, and plopped her down on his lap.

The bulge in his trousers made itself evident then, nudging her leg in the most insistent way. The memory of having him inside her the previous night made her shiver.

“What if someone opens the door?” she whispered, already trailing soft kisses down his upturned face. Over his temple, down the hard line of his cheekbones, along the uncompromising jaw.

“They won’t.” His hand slid down her leg to her knee. Hooking underneath, he lifted her leg, maneuvering it until she sat astride him as a man might sit a horse.

She kissed his earlobe, accepting his certainty because it suited her. And because she suspected his servants were trained not to interrupt him when he had a lady alone in his carriage.

Boldly she slid her tongue along the outer shell of his ear. He shuddered, moving his hips beneath her.

“You like that,” she whispered.

“If any part of you touches any part of me, I like it, Honey.”

She drew back to regard him. Every time she looked, he grew more handsome. How could that be?

She moved her hands from his shoulders to frame his face, holding it steady while she kissed him deeply, possessively, as he’d kissed her.

The carriage lurched forward, rocking them together so that he nudged against her sex.

His hardness made her gasp. His hands at her waist urged her against him, again and again, rough fabric against smooth wet, sensitive flesh. The dampness between her legs must be soaking into his trousers, but he didn’t seem to care.

He thrust his fingers between them, beneath the layers of her gown. He touched her so expertly she was nearly maddened by it. Her control—what was left of it—slipped from her grasp. On another shuddering gasp, she kissed him passionately, wildly, grinding her mouth against his.

“Inside me,” she panted. “I need you.”

“Yes.” His dark eyes held none of the merry wickedness she’d seen there before. They seared her with fiery intensity.

With quick, jerky movements, he freed his member, found her entrance, and thrust, pulling her down over him at the same time.

The shock of that powerful invasion made her give a choked cry. His hands gripped her waist as he thrust and thrust, over and over with powerful, uncompromising strokes. She might have held the higher position, but he dominated her completely, possessed her with a strength and raw sensuality she had only guessed at before.

Her hair tumbled down around her ears as she strained to keep up with him, all her senses focused on the feel of him inside her, stroking inside her in exquisite torture.

Her eyes popped open in surprise as she felt that tightness upon her again, increasing bit by bit, but not quite … there. She whimpered in greedy longing and a hint of frustration, tightening her hold on his shoulders, her springy locks falling forward over her face.

Davenport gripped a hank of her hair and pulled her head down to him so his lips slid across her cheek. In a raw, husky tone, he uttered the most obscene phrase she’d ever heard, hot breath in her ear as he pumped harder into her and she shattered, convulsing around him, gripping and milking him, taking him with her over the brink.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

After that, Davenport cajoled Honey into letting him sneak up to her bedchamber for a more leisurely session of lovemaking. In Mrs. Walker’s state of inebriation she wouldn’t have noticed an orgy going on in her house, but Hilary still made him climb up to her, for fear of the servants.

When they were spent at last, Honey raised herself on one elbow and looked down at him.

“You never told me why you disappeared from London,” she said, investigating his chest with one curious, trailing fingertip. “How did that come about?”

He grimaced. “You really want to know?”

At her nod, he tried to decide how much to tell her and where to begin. He hadn’t confided in anyone save Ashburn. Cecily knew, but only because Davenport had given her husband permission to tell her. The story seemed to belong to another lifetime.

At last, he said, “I disappeared to escape various government agencies and … others who were hounding me.”

“Why? What had you done?” Apprehension showed in her face. No doubt she feared he’d done something unforgivable. She was right to be wary of his past, but not for that reason.

“Oh, nothing illegal or even immoral, on the face of it,” he assured her. “Ashburn told you I was a scientist, didn’t he?”

She nodded.

“I’d invented a kind of explosive that … Well, it doesn’t matter what kind of damage it could cause or how it was made. I was stupid enough to make my breakthrough known to the wrong people. The military and arms manufacturers alike wanted to exploit the invention. Not to mention the French.”

He gave a sour smile. “Well, of course they did. I was so bloody naïve, flush with the excitement of discovery, the military value of an explosive didn’t occur to me. ‘Think of all the people we could maim and kill in one fell swoop,’ they said. ‘Think of the profits.’ When I realized the frenzy my Promethean hubris had caused, it was too late. The gods were already punishing me.”

“So that is why you disappeared.” Her palm smoothed over his rib cage in the most distracting way. “Did they imprison you? Were you incarcerated all that time?”