Stealing the Bride (16 page)

Elton made a low groan, as if she were wrenching his disobedience out of him. He was entirely loyal to Temple, but his concern for his employer’s reckless turn of late outweighed even his unswerving fealty.

“Oh aye. You can go. But I don’t see how. It’s a costume sort of party. And you don’t have anything to wear.”

She bit her lip. Dash it, he was right. She could hardly make an appearance in her wrinkled and dirty traveling dress.

Then she remembered Temple’s words.
A goddess. Meant to tempt the hearts of men.

A goddess
. She glanced around the room, her gaze settling on the elegant bed.

She stalked over to it and began yanking away at the gauzy curtains and the coverings. “I most certainly do, Elton. I most certainly do.”

Temple had planned on making only the briefest of appearances at the Assembly Rooms. Then he’d duck out and be away. He’d instructed Elton to have the horses and carriage ready to go just after midnight.

And most importantly, to make sure that Diana was well in hand.

For the hundredth time he glanced around the room, half expecting to see her sauntering through the crowd, a victorious grin on her face, and her eyes alight with mischief.

She’d acquiesced to his demand that she stay put for the night, but he didn’t believe for a minute that she’d do as he bid her.

That only made his desire to leave all that much more pressing. And it had nothing to do with their unfinished kiss.

Stewie had probably saved him from disaster.

“Temple,” the man said. “There you are. You are as difficult to keep track of as the highwayman you’ve chosen to portray.”

Stewie stepped back and eyed him. “I think it was ingenious of you to choose to portray a highwayman. Taking a cue from Elton, eh? ’Tis brilliant, sir. Brilliant.” He stepped back and struck a pose, obviously waiting for Temple to make the same observations about his costume.

The man had come as a Turkish vizier. He wore a great turban made of purple silk that teetered above his head. Atop the turban there sparkled an array of paste gems and feathers dyed in a rainbow of colors.

The dazzling, wavering display was enough to send one to the necessary with a bad case of nausea.

But if the turban wasn’t homage enough to extravagant excess, Stewie had spared no expense on the remainder of his costume.

On his chin, he’d glued a horsehair beard that waggled down over his plump belly all the way to the wide belt wound around his robes.

And his robes! Why, they looked as if he’d purloined the wall hangings and bedsheets from a cheap Southwark brothel.

Temple cringed inwardly. This was what he’d come to? Pandering to society’s misfits?

Before he wouldn’t have minded the idea of being included in Society’s collection of fools. But every moment with Diana made him despise his double life even more. There was something about the way Diana looked at him, how she regarded him, that made him long to be the man she saw, the man she’d once loved.

Loved still, despite his best efforts to the contrary.

“Uh-hmm.” Stewie coughed again, spreading out his arms and turning back and forth to afford Temple a full display of his blinding splendor.

Temple blinked a few times to clear his vision and managed to sputter. “Outstanding! Beyond imagination!”

“Yes, yes,” Stewie agreed, his hand going to the scimitar tucked into his belt. He leaned forward, then wiggled his fingers for Temple to come closer. “My wife thought this costume gaudy. Refused to come with me tonight, saying I looked a veritable horse’s ass. Can you believe it?” he confided. “And perhaps it is, given our country company.” He shot a significant glance around the room where the regular complement of King Henrys and Oberons strutted their ensembles. “But I thought it too fine a costume to save until next Season. Don’t you agree?”

“Utterly,” Temple said, nodding enthusiastically. “Such a display will have no equal, no matter the company.”

Stewie’s chest puffed out. “Always said you were a man of impeccable taste, Temple.”

“Uh-uh,” Temple told him, shaking a finger.

“Ah yes, I forgot. Dick Turpin, gentleman of the roads,” Stewie grinned. “And when anyone asks you, you can tell them I am the Grand Vizzard.”

“Vizier,” Temple corrected.

“Oh no, my good man,” Stewie said, shaking his head with such vehemence, it threatened to topple his entire headdress. “I am quite sure it is vizzard. Like gizzard.”

Temple nodded, and then scanned the crowd again, but the room had quickly filled to a horrible crush. As he was jostled yet again by another smiling milkmaid, he turned to Stewie and asked, “Is there always such a crowd?”

“Here?” Stewie laughed. “Why, usually there is enough room for a game of cricket.” The man glanced around and then winked at Temple. “’Tis all your doing. Why, the tickets for tonight sold out within an hour of your arrival in town. Dash it, we’d have been in a fine spot if I hadn’t already secured a pair.”

Yes, how lucky
, Temple thought, as yet another sheep’s crook bumped accidentally into his back. Obviously Stewie hadn’t gone to the same great lengths to inform the marriage-minded mothers of the room that he was also up the River Tick when it came to funds.

They probably wouldn’t be so ruthless in pitching their hapless daughters in his direction if they knew their future duchess would be living in a one-room apartment in St. Giles—shared for the most part with a former highwayman.

He saw a Juliet being steered in his direction and stepped back into the crowd and behind a column to avoid any more bruises.

Stewie had turned his attentions to entertaining a young fellow dressed as Lancelot with great stories of London, and therefore didn’t realize Temple was no longer at his side, thereby affording him a chance to escape.

As he began to move deeper and deeper in the direction of the back wall and toward a garden door, he heard a conversation that stopped him cold.

Softly spoken words, said in French. But any beauty of the language was lost in the menacing tone with which they were uttered.

“They say he will be here tonight. Find him and you will find the bride.”

Temple paused a few paces past the trio of men, reaching up to adjust his mask to feign a reason for his proximity.

“And how do we do this?” one of the men said, his voice almost too low to hear. “Look at this crowd. He could be any one of these…these…fools. And what of the bride? How will we ever find her?”

While Temple shared the man’s opinion of the company, he had no doubt about whom they sought.

But why? What the devil would a trio of French agents want with a runaway spinster?

It made no sense. But their dangerous tenor only made him realize the urgency of the situation.

And of his need to get back to Diana. As quickly as possible. He wasn’t about to let them find her. Not now. Not ever.

If it hadn’t been for his years of training in the field, and the restraint that Pymm claimed he lacked, he would have bolted from the room in a blaze of heroic thunder to Diana’s side. And most likely with Marden and his cohorts in his fiery wake.

But his London indifference carried him calmly through those agonizing moments as he finished adjusting his mask even as his heart raced at the notion of Diana back at the hotel, alone and unguarded, save for Elton. Though he knew his driver would stake his own life to save her, in Temple’s heart that job was his.

Always had been.

That recognition startled him almost as much as Marden’s next desperate utterance.

“I want her found. Tonight. Let nothing or no one stand in your way. Templeton is here, and so must our bride.”

Then to his horror, he spied a trio of feathers coming in his direction.

Stewie.

“Eh, there, Turpin,” he called out. “Thought I’d lost you. Come back out of there. You’ll never believe who just arrived.”

Temple had no choice but to push back into the crowd, back toward his tenaciously attentive friend, lest Stewie create a hullabaloo.

“Look there,” the man said, pointing toward the entranceway.

Temple couldn’t see anyone he recognized.

“Don’t you see them?” Stewie asked, rising up on his toes and waggling his fingers in the direction of the double doors. “Pins and Needles. I told you they were about.”

Sure enough, Stewie was right. The pair of adversaries were making their entrance into the room. Neither man wore a costume, rather they were still in the same evening clothes they’d been wearing at White’s four days earlier.

Obviously their quest for the runaway heiress had become part of the local gossip mill, for two paths parted down opposite sides of the room, allowing them to make separate entrances.

Temple found it amusing that they were more inclined to glare darts at each other than actually look for their intended bride in the crowded room.

Then to his own chagrin, he realized he too had been caught up in the spectacle. He twisted around to find Marden and his men, only to discover they’d melded into the crush of the Assembly Rooms.

He muttered a curse under his breath.

Stewie heard him and misunderstood his anger. “Never fear there, Temple. I’ll help you out with these fellows. Between the two of us fine wits, we should be able to locate your heiress before those young pups.”

Temple shuddered. First at Stewie’s assertion that they were intellectually equal, and then the man’s intimation that he wasn’t counted amongst the younger set any longer.

When had he gotten old? Then again, when had he ever lost an adversary in a crowded room?

He was definitely losing his edge.

The blame lay, he knew without a doubt, on Diana’s doorstep. The minx was enough to rattle any man’s wits. If he was of a right mind, he’d march right over to the hotel, haul her back to this room, and hand her over to Penham or Nettlestone—whichever one he had the misfortune to bump into first.

Then she could be their difficulty.

But that ignoble problem was still his. At least for the time being.

“Oh, tonight is a rare one,” Stewie was saying. The feathers on his turban began another twittering dance, sending the plumes fluttering into Temple’s nose.

He swiped at them, trying to clear his vision.

“Do you see that fine bit of lace?” Stewie said, as he elbowed Temple in the ribs and pointed at the entrance. “Now, there’s a chit who could make a man forget he’s after a spinster’s gold.”

A collective gasp of shock rippled through the room, leaving in its wake a silence of stunned disbelief. Temple knew the origin of this calamity at the doorstep.

Diana.

S
lowly he turned his head, glancing over his shoulder at the entranceway where a lone woman stood.

A barely clad masked woman.

Temple’s jaw dropped.

Now, he considered himself rather jaded. And there was little in the world capable of rendering him speechless. He’d seen too much in his career to be scandalized by the antics of Society. But the costume Diana wore, or rather didn’t wear, stunned even him.

Gone was the fashionable, yet sensible, dress she usually wore.

A gauzy length of silk lay over her shoulders, falling to the floor in a mock Grecian shawl.

Mock in the sense that it concealed nothing.

Then he recognized the gossamer fabric as the draperies from the bed in his hotel room. She’d twined them around her body in imitation of one of those enticing marbles in the British Museum that anxious mothers hurried their impressionable children past, lest they be ruined by such a lewd display.

Diana’s costume would probably give even the enthusiastic curators vapors for a week.

The wrapping wouldn’t have been so dramatic, so scandalous if she’d chosen to wear something beneath it…something other than just her chemise. To make matters worse, she’d pushed the short sleeves off her shoulders, leaving them bare and her breasts nearly exposed beneath the shimmering drapes that had once fluttered in his room.

And his room wasn’t all she’d ravished to obtain her outlandish costume.

Her hair sat piled atop her head in a flurry of blond curls, bound in place by a wreath of ivy. Torn, he suspected, from the walls of the hotel. Willful strands tumbled free from the greenery into a swaying path of temptation down to the fair prospect of her bare shoulders.

For a moment she stood perfectly still, as if she were sculpted of marble, gazing out from behind her mask at the gaping crowd. Then in a slow, precise movement, she turned ever so slightly toward the open door, as if she were waiting for someone to join her on her throne of steps.

It was a calculated move, Temple decided, for the silence erupted once again into a sea of gasps and whispered reactions from behind a bevy of fluttering fans as she revealed the other surprise of her costume.

From the men in her audience, Diana received an applause made up of a hundred or more sighs of longing. Even Stewie’s never ending litany fell into an unearthly silence as the poor man’s mouth gaped and flapped at words that couldn’t get past his rattled wits.

Stewie wasn’t alone in his wordless floundering. Temple’s breath caught at the sight before him.

She’d torn the back of her chemise asunder, so it displayed her flawless skin from the nape of her neck all the way down to that small enticing plane at the bottom of a woman’s back where a man’s palm fits perfectly.

It was as if she’d bared herself in an open invitation for someone to claim that one spot…to put his hand on her, and pull her into his arms for an endless night of lovemaking.

As much as Temple wanted to curse her foolhardy audacity, his body had a completely different response. Her enticement challenged him to reconsider everything he’d ever known about her.

Yes, he’d always thought of her as beautiful. And he’d always known she was passionate. But this…this wanton display boldly declared her spirited sensuality, the desires of a woman grown offered brazenly to him, and only him.

He knew she was challenging his honor and resolve not to bend to the shared hunger and desires that inextricably bound them together. Nor would she tolerate being kissed and set aside any longer.

In her choice of costumes, she’d thrown down the gauntlet and declared war. Diana knew, as well as he did, that making love would be the only way to stop the raging battle of desire between them.

Just then, her searching gaze met his, and her sweet, rose-colored lips curved into a wickedly sly smile.

Dare to hide me away, will you?
she seemed to be saying.

He knew now he’d only been trying to cork a genie back into her bottle. An impossible task, if ever there was one.

She began her descent down the steps, and young bucks and would-be gallants raced forward to offer their assistance. She disdained them all with a wave of the impromptu bow she’d fashioned out of a branch and carried loosely in one hand.

Temple now added one shrubbery to her list of damages.

Notwithstanding his own aching need for her.

Her indifference did not slow down the hopeful, including her rival suitors, Lord Harry and the baron.

And he had to give it to her, when Penham and Nettlestone arrived at her side, she never missed a step. Rather than give herself away, she gave her faithless betrotheds the same cold greeting she bestowed on all the others and kept walking toward the only man in the room she seemed to see.

What had he said to her earlier this evening?

A goddess meant to tempt the hearts of men.

He put his hands on either side of his forehead and shook his head. She’d taken him at his word, and dressed as her namesake. Diana, the huntress.

God help him, he’d become the unwitting prey of one determined goddess.

Perhaps he should add his name to the long list of mortal men who at one time or another foolishly spurned a goddess.

The crowd parted in a wave of shocked disbelief at what their usually staid evening had become.

For those who forsook the evils of London, this flagrant display of decadence only affirmed their beliefs that the city had become nothing short of a modern Sodom and Gomorrah.

And now its wickedness and corruption had invaded Buxton, no less!

As Diana continued her slow, measured progress, Temple heard the beginnings of murmured rebellion forming in the ranks of the ladies in attendance.

Glancing around, he realized if he didn’t get her out of the room and fast, she’d probably be the subject of the first witch burning in these parts in over a century.

Diana slowed before him only long enough to say, “Our dance, sir.” Catching up his hand, she led him toward the musicians.

“Diana,” he whispered into her ear. “We had an agreement. You were to stay in the hotel.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “You presented your wishes, my lord,” she replied. “I don’t recall ever agreeing to them.”

Temple dug in his heels and brought them both to a halt. He leaned over to her ear, the beguiling scent of her perfume filling his senses, pure and tempting as a rose in December. And, as with its forebear, he knew enough not to get too close.

Both the rosebush and Diana bristled with thorns.

Wary, but ready, he told her in no uncertain terms, “Hear this. We are not dancing. We are leaving. Now!”

She shook her head, her curls tossing in their own wave of disapproval. “Temple, how you’ve managed all these years without me, I simply don’t understand. Can’t you see that if you were to carry me out of here right now—which is what you would have to do,
carry me
—I fear that would only lead to more speculation than what is already running rampant through this room.” She smiled and pulled him the two steps onto the floor, and then waved her hand in a regal acknowledgment of the musicians.

The poor quartet must have sensed the ugly mood growing in the room and started playing a lively romantic set. Most likely to drown out the ill wind of chatter rising around the now-infamous pair before them.

Temple had no choice but to dance with her. In an attempt to offer them some cover from the prying crowd, he grinned as amiably as he could and waved at the crowd to come and join the dance.

Those inclined to gossip and the busybodies of Buxton, citizens who didn’t share their neighbors’ righteous indignation, caught hold of a partner and entered the forming lines, if only to get close enough to speculate on the lady’s identity.

Diana smiled blithely, as if she were wearing a perfectly elegant and proper gown, and this assembly was nothing more than a typical Wednesday evening at Almack’s.

Temple did his best to continue the charade, but it was nearly impossible. This close to her outrageous costume he realized just how naked she truly was—why, he could almost discern the rosy hue of her nipples. He didn’t dare look any further south for fear of what he might spy.

But he did, and much to his chagrin, he realized her pillaging hadn’t been limited to just the hotel’s property. The wretched little thief had gone through his valise.

“Is that girdle my best cravat?” he asked.

“Yes. Quite charming, if I do say so myself.” She raised her hands and moved her hips back and forth to offer him a better view.

As if he needed any more of a vantage from which to observe her. What he should be doing was scanning the crowd for Marden. And Lord Harry. And Nettlestone. Any of whom could upset the delicate balance of this topsy-turvy evening.

“I believe that was packed in my valise when I left. What were you doing going through my belongings?”

She had the shameless audacity to blush beneath her white mask, but he didn’t know why she bothered. He didn’t believe for a second she had a shred of morals left in her possession.

“I didn’t go through your valise,” she shot back, just before stepping out of his grasp and into the grinning and appreciative care of a rather skinny Friar Tuck.

“Elton fetched it for me,” she said when she rejoined him.

“He’s still alive?” For from the first moment Temple had spotted her, he’d assumed that Elton was singing with the heavenly choir, because if he wasn’t dead already, he would be when Temple returned to the hotel.

Then again, this was Diana he was dealing with. And dressed as she was, he wondered if there was a man alive capable of naysaying her wishes.

Including himself.

He decided to stop staring at her and concentrate on more practical matters. Such as how to get them away from the assembly, and how he was going to manage to pay for the damage she’d wreaked upon the hotel.

“What else did you manage to purloin for this illicit getup?” he asked.

She grinned. “You find me illicit?”

“I don’t want to discuss how I find you,” he shot back. She moved out of his grasp and down the line of dancers. Certainly not here. Not in public.

More like in a private room. Preferably one with sheets and a wide, cozy bed.

Temple cringed. There he went again. He needed to concentrate. They were in danger. Real danger, and all he could think about was despoiling another man’s intended.

Whoever the lucky bastard might be.

“I want to hear what you think,” she whispered when she returned to his side.

“I’m sure you don’t want to hear what I am thinking right now?”

“That bad?”

“Yes. I should hand you over to Nettlestone this minute and be done with your troublesome ways.”

“But you won’t,” she said with supreme confidence, her unflagging resolve annoying him to no end.

He tried to will himself to just do it. He should. Yet he couldn’t decide who deserved her more—Nettlestone or Penham. Or whether there was more reward in seeing Diana live the rest of her life with the
ton
referring to her as Lady Nettlesome or Lady Harry?

He had to admit, the first title was rather appropos.

“Now, how do you propose that we elude my oh-so-dedicated fiancés?” she asked, glancing over his shoulder in the direction where Temple assumed Pins and Needles were still trying to outswagger each other.

“It isn’t your bumbling betrotheds who have me over a fence. ’Tis someone else.”

Even with her mask on, he could see her gaze roll upward.

“Oh, Temple, not this Banbury tale about nefarious Frenchmen seeking to steal me away.”

She whirled out of his arms and to the edge of the dance floor. Temple made the steps to rejoin her, and was about to take her proffered hand when he spied a man stepping from the crowd behind her.

From behind the fellow’s mask, his wide-eyed gaze nearly burst as it fixed on Diana’s back. From his open mouth and slightly upraised hand, it was as if he saw something so unbelievable that he dared not breathe or touch it lest it disappear.

And then the man’s lips formed two words.

La mariée
.

The bride.

Before Diana knew what was happening, Temple caught her by the hand and cut a haphazard course through the carefully made lines of dancers.

He sent couples scattering in all directions.

“Oh, pardon me. So sorry. Please excuse us,” she shot over her shoulder as he continued his madman’s dash.

“Temple, slow down,” she called after him. “Why, you nearly toppled that poor lady.”

He didn’t reply, but continued plowing through the room, stirring up a swath of chaos in their wake.

And it wasn’t as if she could tug her hand free from his grasp—he had a hold on her that she doubted even an immortal could break.

He pushed between two matrons who had their heads bent together in companionable gossip, sending them cartwheeling apart in a flurry of lacy caps and cashmere shawls like two hens caught in a barnyard breeze.

Botheration, what was wrong with the man? Diana craned her head around to offer some sort of apology, but what she saw stopped her social niceties.

A trio of men floundered behind them, but their intent was obvious, as their gazes were fixed on one person.

Not Temple.
Her.

These weren’t penniless rakes out to snare her fortune from Cordell’s grasp—or her father’s, for that matter. They had a continental air of disdain and sophistication to them that no Englishman could ever manage, except perhaps Temple.

An odd shiver ran down her spine, a harbinger of something well beyond her ken.

Temple’s Frenchmen.

He’d been telling her the truth.

And they weren’t after her fortune. They wanted her.

She didn’t know how she knew, she just did. But why they pursued her, she couldn’t fathom. Whatever their reason, she wasn’t of a mind to stay the evening and find out.

She stopped dragging her heels, forcing Temple to tow her, and instead started pedaling after him.