But it was not to be Lisette’s. Not if he wished for peace. He was well into his second glass of vodka by the time she arrived home from the theater, her eyes alight with barely veiled indignation. “Why, fancy seeing you here!” she said, tossing her cloak at the cowering butler.
Nash looked up from his glass. “You are late, Lisette.”
The actress shrugged and went to the mahogany bureau. Lisette might be indignant, but she knew on which side her bread was really buttered—and it was not at Drury Lane. “I did not expect you, darling,” she said, pulling the pins from her hat. “Your habits have changed of late.”
“But I pay you to be here.”
“No, my dear, you pay me to fuck you.” She shook out her ice blond hair, eyeing his reflection in the mirror. “But there was a little après-theater soiree at Millie Dow’s. Had I seen you at all, perhaps I would have invited you.”
He snatched his drink and stood. “Come upstairs when you have finished primping.”
“Yes, I wish always to look my best for you, Nash.” Her eyes followed him in the mirror. “Why do you not take up the madeira as you go?”
“I don’t care for any,” he said.
“Well, I
do
,” she said. “So take a glass as well, if you please.”
There was just one glass left on the tray. Nash snatched it and the decanter, then stomped up the steps alone. Once upstairs, he set them on Lisette’s night table and slowly began to undress.
When at last she slid naked beneath the covers, he took her fiercely, thrusting deep on the first stroke, and driving himself almost madly into her, in some futile effort to push away his demons. Lisette responded—she was, after all, an actress. But in truth, she had always liked it this way. It was, perhaps, what had first drawn them together. The need to spend their frustrations and their bodies. The hunger for sexual satisfaction—but without intimacy.
There had been a time, he admitted, when this had been all he had wanted. Surely it still was? He had simply tired of Lisette, that was all. And at the moment, he had tired of this performance, too. Lisette looked up at him through somnolent eyes, her red mouth half open and gasping. It felt so…
insufficient
. It was as if he watched them thrusting and panting and reaching for one another from a distance, and through someone else’s eyes. Someone detached. Passionless.
Nash watched Lisette stiffen and tremble beneath him, then he finished mechanically, pulling himself from her body at the last possible instant, allowing his seed to spill across her milk white thighs. It was perhaps the blandest, most mundane performance of his lifetime. Lisette smiled lazily up at him, but he could sense her discontent. Perhaps she had simply feigned satisfaction. Indeed, perhaps she had been doing so for a long time now. What a harrowing thought that was. By remaining in this farce of an
affaire
, had he simply been making both of them miserable?
There came a time, he knew, in every sexual liaison, when things either shifted to something deeper, or they did not. And once that point was reached, the days and months which followed would bring nothing but resentment and recrimination. Nash did not want anything deeper, and the resentment—well, its taste was already old and bitter. Yes, with Lisette—as with every other lover he had ever taken—the time had come.
After catching his breath, he rolled to one side and dragged an arm over his eyes to shut out the feeble lamplight. Lisette did not turn down the wick as was her habit, but instead sat up a little in bed, her weight shifting on the mattress. For a long, expectant moment, there was nothing but the sound of his breathing in the room.
“Did you play tonight?” she finally asked. “Was it…grim?”
“No,” he said. “I stayed home.”
The truth was, he had not sat down at a card table in days. He had not been to White’s, nor to any of the more nefarious hells he frequented—places crawling with sharks and blacklegs of every ilk. Places which ordinarily would not have given him pause. But of late he’d had no taste for the sport—and he knew better than to gamble when his edge was off. Sharpers were naught but carnivores; they cut the weak from the crowd, and gutted them. None knew this better than he.
“I used to know, Nash, when you came to bed whether you had won or lost.” Her voice held a hard edge. “Tonight you fucked me as if you had lost.”
“Lisette, for God’s sake,” he grunted. “Not tonight.”
“Am I wrong, Nash,” she finally said, “in thinking you have tired of my favors?”
He could hear her picking at the coverlet with her fingernail, almost as a child might pick at a scab. She meant to make them both bleed. He could feel it. And peace meant to elude him yet again. Well, perhaps he deserved no better.
Resigned to his fate, Nash rolled from the bed and went to the window, which overlooked Henrietta Street. He braced his hands wide on the window frame, and stared out into the night. The bells of St. Paul’s were tolling the hour, sounding as if they were swathed in cottonwool. The fog had rolled in so cold and so dense, one could probably swim through Covent Garden, and the streetlamps seemed no more than oily yellow smears.
“Nash, I have been thinking,” said Lisette from behind him. “We…we could have another girl again, could we not? Just for a while. Helen Manders has enormous breasts—and not a scruple to her name, so far as bed sport goes.”
Nash had thrown up the window, and was drawing the cool, acrid air into his lungs in some hope that it would clear his mind. “I do not think so, Lisette.”
“But she is playing Titania this run,” Lisette cajoled. “Perhaps she would even wear her costume. She looks very fetching as a fairy, I do assure you.”
“No, not Helen,” he said. “She is not the answer.”
“Then another man, Nash, if you wish,” she suggested, her voice low and seductive. “Would you like that? Would you? I could be a very bad girl, and afterwards—why, you could punish me. What of Tony? He is very handsome. I should fancy a go at him, I think.”
He whirled about at the window, disgusted by her suggestions. “Good Lord, don’t bring Tony into this,” he snapped. “The man has trouble enough as it is—and a wife, too, I would remind you.”
Lisette rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, Nash!” she said. “Must you be so frightfully conventional? I do not care if he has a wife—and I can assure you that
he
does not care. Not if all I hear is true.”
“Well, he bloody well ought to care,” said Nash. “Why? What have you heard?”
Lisette smiled up at him from the bed. “Come back to bed, Nash,” she purred. “Come back and let me have you again,
hmm
? This time, the way
I
like it. And then perhaps I’ll answer your question.”
Nash turned back again, and dragged a hand through his hair. “No, I…I have to go, Lisette.”
“Nash!” she chided. “It is three in the morning.”
“I have to go,” he muttered, snatching up his shirt.
Lisette crushed her fists into the bedcovers. “Damn it, Nash!” she said. “I grow weary of this…this lackluster, halfhearted
affaire
.”
“My apologies,” he managed, shaking the wrinkles from his coat. “You are perfectly right.”
“Nash, it is like this,” she began, her voice now edged with anger. “I have had enough. And, I suspect, you have, too. I am leaving you for Lord Cuthert. Do you hear me? I am perfectly serious.”
Nash was nodding as he drew on his trousers. “Cuthert, yes,” he muttered. “By all means.”
“And I shall be out by tomorrow, Nash,” she screeched, “if you don’t say
something
which will make me wish to stay!”
Nash shoved his arms through his waistcoat and looked at her blankly. “He’s a nice chap, Cuthert—isn’t he?” he answered. “I shouldn’t wish you unhappy, Lisette. I just—well, I just wish you out of my life. And I out of yours, of course.”
Honesty, it seemed, was not the best policy. Lisette’s expression stiffened to one of utter rage. “Oh, God, how I hate you!” she shrieked, snatching up the decanter of red wine. “I hate you utterly! Completely!”
Her aim was true, but at that very instant, Nash had knelt to find his stockings. The spray of shattering glass just above his head brought him up again. He looked over his shoulder to see the madeira running bloodred down the ivory silk walls.
He stared at the mess in stupefaction for a moment. “Didn’t that decanter match the goblets you broke last week?” he finally asked.
“Yes
,
”
she hissed, sending the last glass crashing into the mirror. “And look! Now you’ve a matched set!”
I
t was just a short visit to the new St. Katharine’s Docks,
Xanthia had decided. A little stroll upriver, not even half a mile. Modern times were coming to Wapping, by way of improved cranes, deeper basins, and expansive, well-lit warehousing. And Neville Shipping, Xanthia had vowed, was to be at the vanguard. With that logic, three months earlier she had plunked down a king’s ransom in a preconstruction leasing arrangement for twelve thousand square feet of warehouse space. The negotiations had been long and hard, but the deal had at last been struck. Today had been her first opportunity to inspect the progress of the construction.
Mr. Kemble, of course, had protested her going. But there was nothing as yet which Xanthia required protection
from
, and she told him so. So she left him in the upstairs office with a crate of old manifests, which had been dumped beside the extra desk Mr. Bakely had found for him, then she went downstairs to find Gareth Lloyd. They could not have been away more than two hours, she would have sworn, but the moment they stepped from Wapping High Street back into Neville’s dim, dingy counting house, everything had gone topsy-turvy. The first hint was the sour, chalky smell which assailed her nostrils.
“Good God,” said Lloyd. His feet were frozen to the threshold as his eyes roamed the room.
Beside him, Xanthia could only stare. Their six clerks were cowering in one corner. Mr. Bakely rushed forward, wringing his hands, his glasses hanging off the tip of his nose. “I tried to stop him, Miss Neville,” he said in a low, wretched voice. “I told him it just
would not do
! But he wouldn’t hear of it!”
Xanthia stepped farther into the room. “Mr. George,” she began, using the name they had agreed upon. “What, pray, is the meaning of this…this
disorder
in my counting house?”
In the distant corner, Kemble’s head whipped around, and his face lit with pleasure. He swished his way around the clump of desks and cabinets. “I call it
pale melon
,” he said almost gleefully. “The Duchess of Devonshire painted her drawing room in it last spring—she is thought all the rage, you know—and now it is all the rage in Mayfair.”
Gareth Lloyd was still staring at the two workmen on ladders who were slathering the wall with a pinkish orange paint. Three of the tall desks had been covered in paint-spattered Holland-cloth, and the others shoved to one side, leaving the clerks looking like sheep cornered in a pen. At the back windows, another pair of men dressed in stiff black suits were unrolling bolts of vivid fabric and holding them up to the windows in animated discussion about color and contrast.
“That’s Phillipe and his assistant,” said Kemble. “From the mercer’s over in Fenchurch. After all, why pay Bond Street prices? I mean, it
is
just a counting house.”
“Indeed, Mr. George, this is
just a counting house
,” Xanthia echoed angrily. “And one which lives and dies by its profit and loss statement each month. We cannot possibly justify such an expense.”
Mr. Kemble seemed to draw himself up three inches. “Madam, everyone must decorate!” he pronounced. “Ugliness is so depressing. So tiring. How can these people be expected to work under such conditions?”
Just then, a loud fist sounded on the open door behind Xanthia. “Oy, Georgie!” cried the caller from the doorstep. “We’re ’ere wiv ’is green carpet. Wot yer want done wiv it?”
“It is called
summer celery
, Mr. Hamm!” Kemble called through the door.
Xanthia turned to see two burly men outside, and a dray cart in the street beyond. “A—a
carpet
?” she managed.
Mr. Kemble gave her a doting smile, and lightly patted her arm. “Do not fret, dear girl,” he whispered. “My friend Max will pay for this. And then the place will look
so
much brighter, will it not? So much more inviting, and—dare I say it?—yes,
cheerful
. And cheer is so important in one’s daily surroundings, do you not think?”
“I…” Xanthia swallowed hard. “I am sure I do not know.”
Gareth Lloyd was surveying the situation with obvious disgust. “Well, I can tell you what
I
should like to know,” he grumbled. “I should like to know what kind of—of
personal secretary
calls his employer ‘
dear girl
.’ And I would venture to say further, Mr. George, that you are about to find yourself unemployed—though why you were ever hired to begin with is quite beyond me.”
Lloyd vanished up the stairs, his feet thundering on the steps. He had been opposed to Kemble’s presence from the outset and clearly thought Xanthia had lost her mind.
Kemble just smiled and patted Xanthia again. “My dear, is your Mr. Lloyd always this testy? Oh, never mind! I am sure he’ll come round—especially when he sees the lavender silk moiré I’m going to hang upstairs.”
Just then, another knock sounded.
“Good Lord, what now?” Xanthia spun around again.
To her shock, the Marquess of Nash stood on the doorstep. Behind him, Mr. Hamm and his minion were wrestling the rolled carpet from their cart. Kemble vanished into the depths of the room. Xanthia felt faintly unsteady. “Lord Nash,” she managed to say. “What on earth?”
Nash had his hat in his hand. “I was just in the neighborhood,” he said. “I thought I should like to see precisely what a ‘grimy little office’ in Wapping looks like. May I come in?”
Xanthia stood aside. “You may as well,” she said. “Everyone else has.”
Kemble, however, had leapt to attention, albeit at a distance. He was rearranging the Holland-covers for the painters, but Xanthia could sense that the man was watching Nash from one eye, quivering like a bird dog on point. Even the cowed clerks were peeking up from their ledgers.
Nash let his gaze drift round the large room. “You are redecorating, I see.”
“There is no
re
-to it.” In the back of the room, Kemble snapped out the next cover like a freshly starched bedsheet. “This place has always been a nightmare. Mustard-colored walls, fly-specked windows, oily, unfinished floors—utterly depressing.”
Xanthia flashed a muted smile in Nash’s direction. “Some of our servants are opinionated,” she murmured.
“Miss Neville, shall I bring up tea now?” Kemble was on his knees, carefully tucking the cloth around the edges of a desk. “And kindly tell Mr. Lloyd I need his opinion on this cabbage-rose pattern for the curtains, if he would be so good as to come back down.”
Xanthia blinked uncertainly. “Mr. George, I do not think Lloyd will much care wh—”
“Nonetheless,” Kemble interjected. “I wish him to come
down
.”
Suddenly Xanthia understood. Kemble wanted her to take Lord Nash upstairs. Alone. Which was perfectly logical, really. There could be but two reasons for Nash’s visit—and neither could be discussed in front of the staff. As to Nash, he had drifted off to examine a set of Hogarth prints, which had been cheaply framed and badly hung on the wall by the door.
Kemble snatched a ledger from Mr. Bakely’s desk. “And Miss Neville, pray take this with you as you go.”
Bakely opened his mouth to protest, and Kemble stepped discreetly on his toe. But when Kemble made no move to bring her the ledger, Xanthia crossed the room a little impatiently and snatched it from his hand. “My goodness, aren’t you a fast worker!” he murmured. “I stand in awe.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, stepping away. “Tea would be delightful.”
“Right away, ma’am,”
“Oh, and Mr. George?” she said quietly.
“Yes, Miss Neville?”
“The
pale melon
must go,” she said. “I am sorry, but I cannot bear it. And no rug. About that, I am adamant. We have too many muddy boots in and out of here. It would soon be ruined.”
Kemble’s eyes sparked with temper. “And the draperies?”
“You and Lloyd must decide,” she answered. “But no ruffles. No fluff. No frill. Do we understand one another?”
“Indeed not,” he said huffily. “But the choices are yours to make.”
Exasperated, Xanthia returned to the door, and to her unexpected guest. “Will you come up to my luxuriously appointed office, Lord Nash?” she asked dryly. “I have a view of St. Savior’s Docks which will simply take your breath away.”
“And God knows I love nothing so much as the sight of a picturesque dockyard,” said Nash. “Lead on, Macduff.”
“
Lay
on,” Xanthia corrected, starting up the stairs.
“I beg your pardon?”
“It is ‘
Lay on, Macduff
,’” she said. “Macbeth is inviting Macduff to fight him. To come forward and attack. Really, Lord Nash, did you not learn your Shakespeare properly at Eton?”
“I’m afraid I have never learnt it at all,” said Nash quietly.
She glanced over her shoulder. “I beg your pardon?”
“I was struggling to learn English when the boys my age were at Eton,” he said. “I do not think I would have quite fit in.”
Something in his tone made Xanthia falter. And again, there was that sudden flash of understanding; of kinship. Yes, she knew too well what he felt. “Forgive me,” she said. “I—I meant only to tease you, not to insult you.”
“No insult is taken,” said Nash. “I make every effort to look the part of a proper British nobleman, Miss Neville, but it is all a bit of a ruse, you see. Deep down, I am just rough-elbowed, Continental riffraff.”
Xanthia managed a grin. “Continental riffraff?” she said. “That sounds exciting.”
He laughed and leaned past her to open the door.
“Oh, no, the next one, please,” she said. “That door leads to our rather untidy storage room. I should die of embarrassment were you to see it.”
Lord Nash smiled and opened the next door. Behind his desk, Gareth Lloyd jerked to his feet. Quickly, Xanthia made the introductions, then instructed Lloyd to go downstairs and attend to the draperies. A few heated words ensued; but in the end, Lloyd stomped back down the stairs.
Suddenly, Xanthia found herself alone with Nash. It was dashed unnerving, too, when she recalled her rather risqué behavior by the river. What must the man think of her?
Nash was prowling about the untidy work space, which now held three desks, the broken crate, a long worktable, and the map which covered one wall. There were also two armchairs and a small tea table by the cold, clean-swept hearth.
“Won’t you sit down?” she asked politely.
“Not until I have seen your glorious view.” Nash was still holding his hat.
“Do forgive the staff, my lord.” Xanthia took the hat and laid it on her desk. “They are not especially skilled in the art of office etiquette.” Then she led him to the deep casement window. “There,” she said, pointing to the opposite shore. “That is Rotherhithe Wall, and the entrance to St. Savior’s. And you see Mill Stairs, just there? And the stave yard, and the timber yard? Oh, and that building, I believe, was the cooperage—before the roof fell and the rats moved in.”
“Good Lord.”
“And, of course, beneath it all, is the Thames, churning with mud and God only knows what else,” she finished. “Scenic, is it not?”
Nash leaned close; so close, she could feel the heat of him against her shoulder. She felt her discomfiture—and her pulse—ratchet up. “Utterly idyllic,” he answered. “I wonder you get any work done.”
She laughed and tried to turn from the window. But Nash did not give way. “And I also wonder,” he murmured, his eyes roaming her face, “—yes, I wonder what the devil possessed me to come down here.”
For an instant, Xanthia couldn’t catch her breath. When she finally did, it was tinged with his warm, deeply masculine scent. “Perhaps you’ve something you wish shipped?” she said with specious cheer. “You may, of course, trust all your transportation needs to Neville’s. We are the very best in the business.”
The strange intimacy was broken. Nash chuckled, and let her pass. “I shall remember that, my dear, when next I need something sent to—oh, where
do
you go, anyway?”
“To hell and back, Lord Nash, if there’s money to be made.” She motioned him to the chairs by the hearth. “But whatever it is you’ve come for, you may as well have tea first.”
Her timing was excellent. One of the clerks rapped softly on the door, then shouldered his way through with the battered old pewter tea service. “That Mr. George fellow is upset we haven’t any cakes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m to go up to the bakery and fetch some.”
Xanthia refused the cakes and sent him out again. She poured tea, and she and Nash exchanged opinions about the weather. Nash thought it might rain. She did not.
It felt so strange to discuss such mundane things after all that had passed between them. Xanthia knew she should concentrate on what de Vendenheim had asked of her, but she could not get past the fact that Nash was
here
—in her office, prowling around like a caged panther and interjecting himself into her ordinary world in a way which sent her senses reeling.
The man was the stuff of female fantasies; a man who made one think of breathless sighs and tangled sheets, not the sort of man who turned up for tea in the middle of one’s workday afternoon. But he was here, and he was behaving with restrained civility—though his dark, too-long hair and obsidian eyes made him look just a little untamed. She let her eyes drift over his snug breeches and tall, black Hessians, which emphasized his height and lean musculature. His riding coat was close-fitted across a pair of fine, broad shoulders, and tailored with a decidedly Continental cut.
Good manners took over and kept Xanthia from staring at him as pointedly and as intently as she might have wished. “You rode, I collect?”
“Yes, I wished to take the air,” he said.
She laughed. “In Wapping?” she asked. “Oh, never mind! Tell me, my lord, of your background. Was English not your mother tongue?”
He smiled self-deprecatingly, “No, not
my
mother’s,” he agreed. “She despised England and everything in it, I think.”
“Ah,” said Xanthia. “Where was she from? The Continent, I daresay, with that sort of attitude.”
He laughed again. “Yes, you are quite right,” he admitted. “She was from Montenegro. Do you know it?”