“Does Mrs. Ambrose wish to?”
Nash half shrugged. “Mrs. Ambrose likes it both ways,” he said.
“Both ways?”
“Never mind, Zee,” he said. “Here, have another slice.”
Xanthia took one. “Do you think Kieran ties her up before he has his way with her?” she suggested, biting into it. “Or perhaps she does something naughty to him? Perhaps—yes, perhaps she
canes
him. I daresay she dresses up like some slutty governess and just wallops his—”
“Good Lord, Zee!” He looked at her in pure exasperation. “I am sure I do not know. Besides, it is more likely to be the other way round.”
“The other way round?”
“Mrs. Ambrose likes her men…dominant.”
Xanthia eyed him carefully across the communal wineglass. “Then Mrs. Ambrose chose the right partner,” she replied. “Besides, what woman wants a conventional, unimaginative man in her bed?”
This time, the look he shot her was dark, and assessing.
Xanthia smiled. “In any case, I do hear her say things to him sometimes. Oddly suggestive things—when she thinks no one is listening.”
“Mrs. Ambrose and your brother make a dangerous pair,” said Nash.
Xanthia had risen from her chair, and circled behind Nash. “Do you think we make a dangerous pair?” she asked him, bending low over his shoulder.
He looked up at her, his gaze suspicious. “At the moment, my dear, you strike me as the most dangerous woman I know.”
Xanthia ran her hands over his shoulder, and down his chest. The fine lawn of his shirt was soft, but the muscles beneath were warm and firm. “I must go soon,” she said. Lightly, she trailed her tongue around the shell of his ear. “But I should hate us to waste that fruit. Why do we not take it upstairs?”
Wordlessly, he rose, and snatched the bowl from the table.
Xanthia awoke in Nash’s embrace some hours later, sated and sore from his languorous lovemaking. The fruit was gone, and most of the hibiscus petals had wilted. Only the brimming vases remained to remind her of Nash’s romantic gesture.
Nash lay on his back, breathing deeply. She wondered at the time. Late—very late, she was sure, but the lamp was turned so low, she could not see the mantel clock. With great care, she eased herself from his arms, and sat up on the edge of the bed. She dragged the hair from her face and looked at the untidy pile of clothing she had left on his chair. It was imperative she be home before the servants stirred.
With one eye on the bed, she dressed, then carefully tucked two letters inside her pocket. She had found them in his escritoire. They were not franked, and the darkened folds suggested that perhaps they had traveled far. She hoped they would not be missed—and that she would soon have an opportunity to replace them.
She had seen another, larger desk in the library. On her way out, she meant to have a careful look at it. If it yielded nothing to prove Nash’s innocence, then that was it. She was done—and she meant to tell Mr. Kemble so at her first opportunity—tonight, if she caught him skulking home behind her.
Xanthia was beginning to rue the vow of secrecy she had given de Vendenheim. At this point, her word of honor was the only thing which kept her from simply telling Nash the truth—that the Government suspected him of being a traitor. Dear God, how awful that sounded! How could she bring herself to say the words? And what would he say in return?
From the outset, she had been intrigued by Nash, and Lord de Vendenheim’s cloak-and-dagger business had served only to inflame that intrigue. The chaos which de Vendenheim had described—the disruption to England’s trade routes and the economic ruin which might follow—had deeply concerned her, yes. But perhaps, in the dark reaches of her mind, she had simply been searching for an excuse to seek Nash out.
In any case, her suspicion about his guilt had slowly turned to a certainty of his innocence. And somehow, Xanthia had come to believe his innocence would be easily proven—naive of her, she now realized, given the complexities of this case. Had she foolishly imagined that she would simply hand de Vendenheim some tidbit of exoneration, and he would go haring off in search of other quarry? Certainly she had not imagined that she would fall desperately in love with Lord Nash.
Dear heaven!
Had she?
Had she fallen in love with him?
Xanthia closed her eyes. Lord, what a fool she was. And what a reckless intrigue she had got herself mixed up in.
She could not resist one last look over her shoulder before slipping out the door. Nash had the bedsheet thrown over one leg, but the rest of him could be seen in all his masculine glory by the flickering lamplight. She could still make out the solid rise and fall of his chest, the dark tangle of curls about his half-erect manhood, and the stubble of beard, which had already begun to shadow his lean cheeks. He was a beautiful, virile male—and Xanthia was suddenly grateful that he had chosen to take her to his bed.
Softly, she closed the door and felt her way down the stairs. The sconces had long ago burnt out, and in the library, all was darkness. With hands which shook, she managed to light a lamp on one of the reading tables, and carry it to the desk without incident. Gingerly, she drew open the top drawer. Nothing was locked. The ridiculousness of it struck her yet again. Would a gunrunner and a traitor leave his desk unlocked?
Of course not. But Xanthia poked hastily through it, swallowing down her anxiety, and finding little of interest save for a teetering pile of business correspondence, which included eight notes of hand—gaming debts, she supposed. And none of it was hidden, but rather, heaped in a wooden box on the desktop.
She was bending down to pull out the last drawer when a beam of light cut silently across the desk. Her heart in her throat, Xanthia jerked up, blinking against the brightness, which hovered in the doorway. “Xanthia?”
“Yes?” She closed the cracked drawer with her toe. “Nash? Is that you?”
He approached the desk wearing the ivory silk dressing gown, his lamp held high. “Xanthia, what are you doing?”
“Doing?” she echoed. “I—well—I am writing you a note. Or that is to say, I
was
going to write you a note—to—to say that I had to go. Home. But there seems to be no letter paper.”
His eyes never leaving hers, Nash bent down, then slowly drew open the top drawer. A stack of white foolscap glowed pallidly in the lamplight.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh, how foolish of me. There it is.”
Nash set down the lamp a little roughly. The flame cast eerie shadows up his face, hardening his jaw, and emphasizing the hollows of his face. “Xanthia,” he said quietly. “Xanthia, how could you?”
Nausea welled in her throat. “Well, I th-thought that there would be letter paper,” she lied. “Honestly, Nash.”
“After the evening we shared…” he began. Then his words fell away.
“Nash,” she said sharply. “Oh, Nash, I am sorry. I—I can explain. Truly.”
“Well, I think the very least you could do,” he said bitterly, “would be to wake me and kiss me good-bye.”
“To—to
kiss
you?”
“What would you think, my dear, if you woke to find
me
missing from
your
bed after a night of incomparable passion?” he asked. “Would you say—‘Oh, I daresay he left a note in the library! That shall do very nicely!’—And then just roll over and go back to sleep?”
“N-No.” She clasped her hands, and bit her lip.
He set his hands on her upper arms. “Xanthia, this…this is just an
affaire
,” he said. “I know that. But it is more than that, too, isn’t it? Do we not have…a friendship? At the very least?”
She dived into his arms. “Yes, of course we do,” she said, setting her temple to his strong shoulder.
But I needed to ransack your private papers first.
Dear God, how dreadful that sounded! What was she thinking? What kind of person was she?
She drew back and let her eyes drift over his harsh, handsome face. “Nash, my dear,” she said. “It was thoughtless of me. I—I adore you. Haven’t I made a fool of myself proving it? But you have a score of women to choose from. Surely…surely you would not lose sleep over me?”
He took hold of her shoulders a little harshly. “I have
one
woman,” he said roughly. Then there was a hitch—a hesitation in his tone—as if he was just now thinking it through. “One woman, at present, and that would be you, Zee. And whilst this…this very delightful
affaire
continues, there will be no one else. For either of us. Is that clear?”
“Yes, my lord,” she said softly.
He tilted his head, one eye narrowing. “And if you
ever
disappear like that on me again, Zee, so help me—”
She covered his mouth with hers, cutting off his words.
“I won’t,” she said, when their lips parted several moments later. “I promise. I won’t do it ever again.”
He stepped back, lifted her hand, and kissed it in an elegant, old-fashioned gesture. “Zee, I wish you to do something else for me,” he said. “Will you?”
“Yes, I would do anything, I think,” she said.
He smiled. “This is an easy thing.”
“Then I shall certainly do it.”
Nash hesitated for a moment. “I just wish you to call me by my name,” he finally said. “Just…Stefan. No one does anymore—well, almost no one. But, once in a while, I like to hear it. It reminds me, I think, that I am something more than just this English title.”
She smiled, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Then Stefan it is,” she murmured. “Now you must do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“Kiss me good night again…Stefan.”
W
ell, well!” sang Kemble upon entering Xanthia’s office the following morning. “It seems someone had a late night.”
Xanthia was not in a tolerant mood. Gareth had already remarked upon her bleary-eyed appearance
ad nauseam
. “Be still, my head hurts,” she muttered. “Did you see Mr. Lloyd downstairs?”
“Off to the West India Docks already,” he said, placing the morning’s post on his desk. “You’ve another letter from that victualler. My, but he is getting testy! Do you wish me to take care of him?”
Xanthia cut a suspicious glance at him. “Take care of him how?”
Kemble shrugged innocently. “Why, just a civil chat,” he responded. “What did you think I meant?”
“A civil chat!” Xanthia pushed away her tea in disgust. “What that scoundrel needs is to be drawn and quartered.”
“Frankly, I’ve found that tends to draw a crowd.” Kemble was sorting Gareth’s post from the pile. “But I know a couple of blokes down in Stepney who’ll tie his wrists to his ankles and toss him in Greenwich Reach.”
Xanthia scowled. “No one is going hang over this victualling bill.”
“Then they can tie his wrists to his ankles and toss him naked into Mother Pendershott’s bathhouse,” he suggested, waggling his eyebrows. “He won’t walk straight for a week once those chaps get done with him.”
Xanthia looked up from her desk. “Now
that
is frightfully tempting.”
Kemble finished with the mail and returned to her desk. “Well, let’s get down to business,” he said crisply. “What has Nash said? Have you got the goods on him yet?”
“There are no goods, Mr. Kemble.” Xanthia leaned over and extracted the purloined letters from her satchel. “There was nothing to be found save these, and I cannot make them out.”
He flipped the first letter open. “Oh, he’s a sharp one,” Kemble muttered. “When it comes to what he leaves lying about, he’s likely very careful.”
“Or very innocent,” said Xanthia, coming restlessly to her feet.
Kemble looked up. “I beg your pardon?”
Xanthia went to the window and stared out across the Pool of London. “Mr. Kemble, I wish I had never become involved in any of this,” she said. “I should never have given you my word of honor to keep this confidential. Lord Nash deserves to know what he stands accused of.”
“Miss Neville, what are you saying?”
She turned from the window in frustration. “That it is time we accept that the man is innocent,” she snapped. “Nash knows nothing of this smuggling business. Will you kindly explain that to Lord de Vendenheim? He must move on and blight someone else’s name with his innuendos and suspicions.”
“Dear me!” Kemble began to fan himself with the letters. “Someone’s a little short of sleep.”
“No, someone’s a little short of patience.” Xanthia was pacing now, hands on her hips. “I have done everything short of offering to load up Nash’s Carlow carbines and captain the ship to Kotor myself. I tell you he
simply is not guilty
.”
“Perhaps he just doesn’t trust you?” Kemble had opened the second letter and was skimming it.
“Oh, he trusts me,” said Xanthia. “The man has the instincts of an alley cat. He knows who his enemies are.”
“And yet he does not suspect you,” Kemble pointed out. “A spy beneath his own roof—even in his own—well, never mind that. But if he is so bloody clever, why does he trust you, the very woman Max sent to spy upon him?”
Xanthia felt the crush of guilt weighing her down. “Because I do not wish him ill, Mr. Kemble,” she said. “I have believed—almost from the very first—that he was innocent of this crime.”
“Oh, dear!” said Kemble softly. “Our little mission has been compromised.”
She looked up at him wearily. “No, no, I went about this with an open mind,” she said. “God knows Nash is no paragon of virtue. He might well sell a boatload of rifles to the Greeks—if such a thing occurred to him. But it simply has not.”
Kemble seemed to be considering it. “Well, say nothing more for now,” he replied, tucking the letters into his coat. “I shall take these over to Whitehall so their lads can have a look.”
“Yes, the bloody things are in Russian, aren’t they?”
“Indeed,” said Kemble. “Letters from his cousin Vladislav. He is suffering the gout, and in a very ill humor.”
“How do you know?”
“I daresay you’ve never had the gout, my dear, or you wouldn’t ask.”
“I mean—can you
read
them?”
“Oh, well enough,” he answered, tossing his hand dismissively. “But there is no knowing what might be written between the lines. Perhaps
gout
is just a code word for
gunpowder
or
cannon
or some other sort of contraband. Spies have a thousand such tricks. Peel will hand those off to someone who will grasp all the subtleties.”
He was heading toward the door when Xanthia seized his arm. “One more thing, Mr. Kemble,” she said. “I wish to end this ruse about your working here. Kindly inform Lord Vendenheim. I am in no danger—and I am certainly finished spying on Lord Nash.”
“I shall tell him,” Kemble agreed. “But he won’t like it.”
“Nonetheless, he must deal with it,” said Xanthia, her conscience lightening. “I won’t go back on my word of honor, Mr. Kemble, but from here out, my loyalties lie with Lord Nash. I am giving de Vendenheim the courtesy of a fair warning.”
“You are very bold, Miss Neville,” he said. “I hope you have carefully considered this matter.”
“Oh, I have,” she returned. “Will de Vendenheim give you any trouble?”
“He gives me nothing else,” said Kemble.
“Fine, then. I shall send a note along with you and make it clear that this is my decision.” She went to her desk and began writing. “And as to those letters, Mr. Kemble, you are welcome to take them, but I must have them back this afternoon.”
Kemble looked at her incredulously. “This afternoon?” he echoed. “But we are talking about the Government here, Miss Neville. There will be forms. Procedures. Perhaps even a committee or two.”
Xanthia glared at him. “Kemble, I must have them back,” she insisted. “You must return them to Berkeley Square by midnight, at the latest. If you cannot—well, perhaps I shall feel duty-bound to tell Lord Nash where they are, and why.”
Kemble lifted one eyebrow. “You meant to return them,” he remarked. “How? When?”
“I do not know,” she confessed. “But I
will
get in. I have to.” But her voice broke rather tellingly on the last syllable.
Kemble grasped her other hand, and gave it a squeeze. “Oh, my poor, poor girl,” he said. “Oh, my dear Miss Neville!”
“What?”
But Kemble was just shaking his head morosely. “You really are quite head over heels, aren’t you?” he muttered. “Lord Nash is conveniently innocent. You are madly in love. And Max is going to blame this—all of this—on me!”
At two in the afternoon, Lord Nash still sat in his dressing gown, sipping at his morning coffee. It was, he thought, his third pot, but he was not perfectly sure. The first he’d managed to make himself. Of course, the day before, one of the servants had kindly ground the beans, set the pot on the hob, and laid the kindling beneath it. Even Nash was capable of lighting a fire.
The house seemed oddly empty today. Nash didn’t know why. All the servants had returned promptly at noon, poker-faced and subservient, save for Gibbons. He was puttering about in the dressing room now, after making a great deal of fuss over all that had gone undone in his absence and the mess which had been left behind. The hibiscus petals Gibbons had ordered swept up at once, but curiosity still lay thick on the ground.
Well, let that curiosity run rampant. Nash had no intention of sharing even a hint of what he had experienced last night. He closed his eyes, cradled the warm coffee cup in his hands, and thought again of Xanthia lying naked across his bed, hibiscus petals in her hair. The entire evening seemed almost otherworldly to him now. A time out of place. A mood—a sense of serenity, really, which would likely never be recaptured.
Or would it? For a moment, Nash let himself consider it. Xanthia was not immune to his charms. In fact, she seemed to like him very well—and for himself, too, rather than for what he might give her. Unless one counted the sex, of course. Still, from the very first, Xanthia had brought with her a sort of quiet, which he found deeply comforting. But she was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a quiet woman. No, she was vibrant with life. Beautiful and confident. Gentle, but whip-smart, too, and—
Gibbons came trotting out of the dressing room with Nash’s best evening clothes draped over his arm, whistling a merry tune—always a bad sign.
“What are you doing with those?” Nash asked suspiciously.
“Checking for moths,” replied the valet testily. “We go to Brierwood next week, you will recall.”
“Not in that rig.”
“But there is to be a ball,” sniffed Gibbons. “I had it from Mr. Hayden-Worth. Honestly, if I waited for you to tell me anything—”
“
Next
week,” Nash interjected. “That, Gibbons, is the operative word.”
“And if there are moths?” challenged the valet. “Have you any idea how long it would take to get a new suit of evening clothes made up?”
Nash shrugged. “I must have a dozen more in there somewhere,” he said, picking up his coffee. “Just drag out a set of old ones.”
“They mightn’t fit,” said Gibbons with another sniff. “None of us, I fear, are quite the men we once were.”
Nash put his coffee down, and turned sharply in his chair. “What the devil is that supposed to mean?”
Gibbons smiled faintly. “You are almost five-and-thirty, sir,” he said. “Things begin to shift—or spread—perhaps even
sag
.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Nash, leaping from his chair. He loosened the dressing gown and jerked it off.
“Really, my lord!” Gibbons rolled his eyes.
“The tape measure!” Nash growled, stripping off his shirt and hurling it to the floor. “Get me the goddamned tape measure!”
Gibbons sighed, went into the dressing room, and returned with the tape, curled like a little snake in the palm of his hand.
Nash loosened the fall of his trousers, and held up his arms. “All right,” he said. “Measure it.”
“Sir, this really is not nec—”
“No, by God, I said
measure
it.”
Gibbons wrinkled his nose and wrapped the heavy ribbon around Nash’s waist.
“Ah-ha!” said Nash. “Thirty-two inches, is it not?”
“
Tsk, tsk
,” said Gibbons.
“What?” Nash demanded.
“They do say a man’s eyesight is the second thing to go,” said Gibbons mournfully. “This tape plainly says thirty-three.”
Nash gasped in horror. “You must be lying.” He squinted down. Yes, Gibbons was lying. The tape very plainly said
thirty-four
.
“Oh, God!” said Nash.
“Not to worry, sir,” said Gibbons placatingly. “Before your sucking gasp of horror, it was an even three-and-thirty.”
And that was the beginning of Nash’s new reality.
He spent the next two days wrestling with it—whilst already mired in the collective quagmire of all his other nascent emotions. Two days of soul-searching; two days to ponder the fact that his life was changing inexorably. For a man steeped in indulgence and hardened in habit, it was a bit much to take. But there was no escaping the truth. He was no longer young, but approaching middle age. His temples bore one or two strands of gray, and trousers which he’d worn for years were now an inch too snug. And in being forced to look back on his lost youth, he was beginning to wonder what, if anything, he had accomplished.
On top of all that, he was very much afraid that, for the first time in his life, he was in love. And he did not care. Or rather—he cared rather too much, and he had not a clue what to do about it. Indeed, of late his nights had been disturbed by tantalizing visions of Xanthia. Not the torrid sorts of nighttime visions he was accustomed to experiencing—though there had certainly been a few of those. No, the more tantalizing visions of Xanthia had been those of the most mundane—and more troubling—sort. Xanthia poking through his sideboard and looking very much at home. Xanthia in his dressing gown. Xanthia feeding him slices of cucumber from her fork.
So. There it was. He had had the unfortunate luck to fall in love with perhaps the one woman in all of London who would not have him. His title and his money meant nothing to her, of that he was utterly certain. Nonetheless, there were a great many things they both shared. A less-than-happy childhood. That constant sense of being different, of being an outsider. And, he believed, a sincere affection for one another. Surely those things were something on which one might build?
On the third day following his passionate tryst with Xanthia, Nash realized he would shortly be expected at Brierwood. God how he hated to leave without seeing her again. He had been half-hoping for another of her smuggled missives, even as he acknowledged how dangerous they were. Perhaps she had come to realize it?
“By the way, my lord,” said Gibbons, who was just finishing off Nash’s neckcloth, “there’s been another letter from Swann.”
Nash scowled. “I think it is high time we had something besides a letter from him.”
Gibbons acted as if he had not spoken. “Most unfortunate news,” he continued, giving the cravat one last fluff. “He fell off the roof of his mother’s cottage.”
Nash lowered his chin. “He fell?” he echoed incredulously. “Good God, what is a man of affairs doing on a roof—
anyone’s
roof?”
Gibbons smiled tightly. “You will recall he is trying to let the cottage, my lord, but the roof was leaking prodigiously,” he said. “He assures me that the break is not bad, but—”
“Break? What break?”
“The break in his shoulder,” the valet clarified. “Well, the clavicle, perhaps? I believe that is a little less dire? In any case, he cannot be jostled in a horse or a carriage for a week or so.”
“I am not fond of this long-distance relationship we seem to be having with Mr. Swann,” Nash complained. “I need him
here
.”