She would have sent an innocent man to his grave.
The guilt that assailed her passed quickly. For truly, how innocent was a man who was impersonating a peer of the realm and obviously out to steal a king’s ransom?
Robert Danvers returned to Bradstone House with more questions than answers.
And with the realization that perhaps he’d made an error in kissing Miss Sutton.
And it wasn’t the fact that she’d then been able to determine that he wasn’t the marquis but what it had done to his carefully wrought plans.
Instead of being able to coerce her into revealing the information she held, he’d given himself away and in the bargain had found himself entangled with a tempting handful.
He’d kissed women in the line of duty before—a ravishing countess in Madrid, whose husband was a French collaborator, a seductively practiced Italian woman, who’d been deserted in Portugal by one of Bonaparte’s cronies and was only too willing to trade her secrets—but none of their traitorous lips had ever coaxed him into forgetting his own
raison d’être.
But Olivia Sutton’s lips teased his mind to forget and his body to react with a primitive heat that burned away his usual cool detachment. This fire went far deeper than her chestnut hair and flashing eyes.
Never had poison tasted so fine.
How had this chit taken him so unawares? So utterly and completely in one kiss that he’d nearly overlooked the true reason he’d come to London?
Then again, the little wench had known exactly what she’d been doing, he told himself. He’d sensed her confusion and then recognition immediately—and yet it had taken her nearly a minute more to wrench herself from his arms. And yet . . .
There had been something completely innocent in her kiss—resistant, tentative, almost afraid. And her eyes, while they had flared with an untamed and heedless anger, they had also told him more than her indignation could—they’d also been relieved, stunned and only too curious as to who he was.
That curiosity, he knew, was what he should fear the most. For a curious miss, especially one as intelligent as Miss Sutton, could prove dangerous. If she started asking questions, making inquiries, his deception would be ruined.
But before he’d let that happen, he’d find a way to pry the secret of
El Rescate del Rey
from her lips, no matter what method of coercion he had to take.
He could imagine what Pymm would suggest.
Take the wench to your bed and be done with it.
Robert shook off that thought immediately. Kissing the little termagant was one thing.
Bedding her was an entirely different matter.
One that appealed to him more than he cared to admit.
“Damn her,” he muttered, as he marched down the street in a worse mood than he had been in last night when he’d discovered her missing from his room.
“I beg your pardon,” huffed a matronly lady who was in the process of hustling her string of wide-eyed charges out of his foul path.
Robert doffed his hat in a short bow, muttering a quick apology. If this were the Peninsula, he wouldn’t have any need for all these wretched formalities and deceptions. He’d haul the traitorous lady before a board of inquiry and wrench the information out of her.
Unfortunately, the situation called for a slightly different tack. And if he was to play on an even field with Miss Sutton, then he needed to know a little more about her.
And Robert knew exactly who could provide this invaluable intelligence.
Striding up the steps of the Bradstone town house, he nodded at Carlyle and asked him, “Can you tell me where her ladyship is?”
The man glanced over his shoulder at the clock ticking away on a shelf in the alcove. “Your mother should just be getting her morning repast in her suite,” he answered. He glanced at Robert’s wrinkled coat and neckerchief and then back out the door as if trying to determine if his eyes were deceiving him—that the Marquis of Bradstone had truly ventured out into London wearing such a poor ensemble.
“Out taking a morning stroll,” Robert told him. Heading for the stairs, he made a parting comment before heading up to his aunt’s suite. “Never fear, Carlyle. I doubt anyone saw me.”
“One can only hope, my lord,” the poor guardian of the Bradstone portals muttered.
Robert had never ventured into his aunt’s private rooms and didn’t quite know what to expect as he tapped on the half-open door.
“Robert, darling!” she cried out, waving her hand at him to enter. “You’re just in time to join me.” Dressed in a ruffled morning gown, she sat on a comfortable looking sofa. Before her a silver tray with a basket of rolls and a pot of tea sat on an ornate low table.
He smiled and walked slowly into this foreign territory. Lady Bradstone’s private sitting room, unlike the rest of the staid and elegant house, was filled with frippery. Lacy curtains and delicately carved chairs added to the dainty appeal of the room. Baskets of needlework sat awaiting attention, as did numerous books and the scattered pieces of correspondence, invitations and calling cards littering a delicate looking desk in the far corner.
The room and its accoutrements, much like his flighty aunt, seemed destined to accomplish many things and nothing at all.
He took the seat next to her on the yellow and white striped sofa. “Good morning, my lady.”
“Robert, you must get over this formality you’ve brought back with you. It is very disconcerting.” She took up the teapot and poured him a cup, adding a lump of sugar and giving it an agitated stir before handing it over to him. “Now, what are you doing up at this hour and in that wretched coat? Certainly Mr. Babbit didn’t suggest this . . . this
ensemble
?”
“Never fear,” Robert told her. “I chose it myself.”
“Harumph,” she sputtered as she poured herself another cup of tea. “Looks more like something you borrowed from that Papist pirate you insist we keep about the house.”
Robert suppressed a smile. Leave it to his aunt not to pass up an opportunity to cast aspersions on Aquiles. “I was out for an early stroll,” he explained. “I didn’t think Babbit’s services were all that necessary for such a minor outing.”
His aunt’s brows rose a bit, as if to say that his valet’s services were more than necessary for every occasion. Then she sighed and reached for a roll, buttering it with the same air of despair that she had used when stirring his tea.
Wisely Robert adhered to the one rule of spying he’d learned early on. When faced with an impossible situation, one learned more by saying nothing than by chattering mindlessly.
So he sipped his tea in chastised silence and let his gaze wander around the room, passing over the gilt pieces and the female frippery until it landed on a small portrait hung next to his aunt’s secretary.
“Mother,” he whispered, before even realizing he’d spoken.
“Yes?” Lady Bradstone answered. “What is it, my dear?”
He shook his head and turned to her. “Um, oh, nothing.” But against his own volition, his gaze turned back to the sight of the face he hadn’t seen in years, not since his childhood.
Her ladyship rose from her chair, followed his line of sight and pulled the small painting from the wall. “My sister, Susannah.”
“She was lovely,” he managed to say, as his aunt returned to the sofa and handed him the portrait.
“Yes, Susannah was the real beauty of our family. Though I had my own legions of
beaux,
my sister claimed the heart of every man in the
ton.”
His aunt sighed. “I miss her ever so much. More each year. Why, she’s been gone, for . . . oh, bother, too many years to count.”
Twenty-two years,
Robert thought. And he’d counted every single one since he’d been four years old and his father had come into the room he shared with his older brother Colin early one morning to tell them their mother was gone. That the fever that had kept her in bed for most of the week had taken her life.
“Oh, aren’t we a melancholy pair,” his aunt said, bubbling once again. “Susannah would never have stood for anyone weeping over her portrait. She loved life too much. ’Twas her folly, I suppose.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked, suddenly curious about the woman of whom he held only a few cherished and blurred memories.
“She could have had her pick of husbands. Father quite indulged her in the matter. But then again I suppose he never assumed she wouldn’t choose someone equal to her in rank. And when she didn’t, making the most unsuitable match, it was disastrous.”
“How so?” All Robert knew of his parents’ marriage was happy times. His mother smiling over the table at his father. The light in his father’s eyes when he entered a room and looked at his wife. Their marriage, short as it was, seemed to Robert to have been ideal—a perfect match of love and friendship.
Apparently his aunt did not see it that way.
“She married for love.” His aunt set the portrait facedown on the table before them. “Promise me, Robert, you will never marry for love. It is a horrible proposition if ever there was one.” She took his hand. “Promise me you will marry some sensible, eligible
parti,
not one of these flighty cits’ daughters who seem so popular these days.”
“Madame,” Robert said, “I can promise you, marriage is the furthest thing from my mind at the present moment.”
This proved not to be the response her ladyship was looking for. He might as well have said he had planned to return to his French prison.
“Oh, Robert, you can’t mean such a thing. You must secure the estate with an heir.” She let out a breathy sigh. “I won’t go through another dispute with that wretched Prinny again. He wants your title something dreadful for one of his odious favorites, and I will not let him have it. Now, you must start seriously considering marriage. Perhaps Miss Colyer, though I realized last night her features are far more coarse than I remember.”
“I doubt Miss Colyer and I would suit,” he told her quite plainly. He could well imagine Miss Colyer on a covert mission in Spain—he doubted she’d last the first mile.
But then unbidden came an image of another woman, a woman he suspected would make not only the first mile but every one after that. He could see her quite plainly, astride a Portuguese donkey, her skirts hitched up, the wind tousling her fiery red hair, her eyes alive with mischief as they crossed enemy territory.
What the devil was he thinking?
“Miss Sutton,” he muttered, shaking the errant thought aside.
“Miss Sutton!” his aunt repeated. “Oh, Robert, don’t tell me you still have a
tendré
for that murderess? Tell me you haven’t seen her.” She paused for a moment and peered into his face. Whatever she saw there he couldn’t guess, but only too quickly her eyes grew wide and she paled to a ghostly white. “Oh, dear God, you have!” she exclaimed, rising to her feet, her hand sclutched to her breast. “I can see it. That scandalous little jade. She won’t rest until she’s utterly ruined you and our family. Oh, you can’t marry
her!”
“You know she’s alive?” he asked.
“Of course I knew she lived. I never believed a word of that tarradiddle about you taking her with you. What nonsense!” She flopped down on the sofa and reached for her cup, taking a much needed sip. “I’ve suspected for years that she was lurking about awaiting her chance to ruin our lives once again.”
Robert smiled at her. “Never fear, madame, I have no plans to marry Miss Sutton. Believe me.”
His aunt sniffed, her skepticism clearly etched in her features. “Well, at least tell Lord Chambley that you’ve seen her. He promised me years ago that if I was able to locate her, he would see to it that she was brought to justice for that poor boy’s murder and that your name would be cleared of any wrongdoing.”
“Lord Chambley?” Robert asked.
“Why, yes,” Lady Bradstone said. “He has been most solicitous of me over the years. My champion, I declare. After you were thought lost on that wretched little ship, he took all your papers and went through them for me, looking for any indication as to where you might have headed so he could send agents there to find you for me. A most thoughtful gentleman, Lord Chambley.”
Robert took a moment to consider this bit of news.
According to Chambley’s report at the time, there had been no papers found in Bradstone’s possessions.
First his deceptions about Miss Sutton’s alleged demise on the
Bon Venture
and now this.
Orlando had been slated to meet Chambley the night he died. Could it have been just bad luck that Orlando ran afoul before their arranged meeting, or a series of unlikely coincidences that all ended with one man—
Chambley
?
“What else has his lordship done for you?” he asked her. Then he added, “So I can properly thank him when next we meet.”
Lady Bradstone set aside her cup. “Funny you should mention that, but I was rather expecting him to call this morning.” She glanced over at the clock on the mantel. “I can’t imagine what is detaining him.”
“Lord Chambley call here? What for?”
“Oh, he’s been after me ever since you returned to let him call on you. He has some questions for his reports, or whatever it is that department of his likes to record. A mere formality, he assures me, that won’t take up more than a few moments of your time.” She sighed and glanced at the clock again. “He’s been sending around notes nearly every day since you returned, requesting an audience, but I told Carlyle not to let him in and not to bother you until you were ready to start receiving company.” She looked at him expectantly.
That explained, Robert mused, Chambley’s odd remarks the night before.
“Oh, I can see you are vexed with me,” his aunt was saying. “I shouldn’t have done that, should I? But Robert, please don’t be angry with me. I know you and Lord Chambley were thick as thieves before you left—”
“Chambley? We were friends?”
“Well, yes. Don’t you remember?” She studied him for a moment. “I can see that you don’t. You and he spent any number of hours locked away in your study before your unfortunate incident.”
“I seem to have forgotten,” Robert said. “Do you recall what we were doing?”