The Rogue (21 page)

“So are you. Congratulations. We are both of us remarkably clever at detecting lies.”

She closed her hands over her mouth. “Saint,” she whispered. “Pray for me.”

A shiver passed through him. “Does your father still intend for you to wed Loch Irvine?”

Her eyes widened. “No. He could not. But this . . .” She gestured between them.

Saint waited. She did not look scheming or defiant. She looked frightened.

He went to her and pulled her into his arms where she was perfect. Determined, frightened, perfect, and
his
.

“You are trembling,” he managed to say with credible composure.

“I am tired,” she breathed against his collar. “Excessively. It has been a . . . fatiguing day, and I have not slept since the ball.”

“The ball.” His composure slipped. “Three weeks ago?”

“Well,” she said with a catch in her voice that sounded like a smile, “I have never threatened my father quite like that before.”

Threatened.

“And my newly betrothed disappeared immediately afterward.” She spread her fingers on his chest. “That was cause for concern.”

The reality of her hands on him was still too new, too unbelievable. She was touching him and he could barely breathe. He struggled to find his tongue.

“You must have known I would return.”

She lifted her face. “How was I to know that?”

He could not summon words.

“But I will recover with a night's sleep.” She made to pull free of him.

He swept her up into his arms. “To bed, then.”

“No.
No.
” Her voice was panicked. Her hand twisted in his waistcoat. “Do not demand that of me. Not tonight.”

“Hush.” He spoke softly as he carried her from the room. “I have already said I won't stay.”

She tucked her face against his neck. “If I allowed any man to stay, it would be you.” They were an echo of her words that night at Fellsbourne, that first night in shadow when he had merely thought her an uncommonly pretty girl with a streak of daring in her soul.

A maid waited in her bedchamber, and he left her to undress her mistress and put her to bed. When the servant departed, he entered and closed the door. Constance lay on her side beneath the covers, her eyes half lidded. He went to the
hearth and placed a new log on the grate. Then he removed his neck cloth and coat.

She seemed to sleep. Moving to a chair, he lowered himself silently into it. For some time he watched her, the gentle rise and fall of her shoulder, tracing with his eyes the dip of her waist and curve of her hip beneath the coverlet.

He could have that body now. It was his. In an instant he could be beside her on the bed, atop her, inside her. Enjoying her.

If I allowed any man to stay.

Allowed.

Even now, when by God's law and man's she was his to do with as he wished, she refused to submit. Edgy pride crowded his lust. She was magnificent. Inconveniently so, given his arousal. But he wouldn't have it any other way.

“Saint?” Her whisper was muffled against the palm of her hand tucked beneath her cheek.

He held his breath.

“I know you are still here,” she said. “I can smell you.”

He unbent from the chair, went to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. “How is that?”

Her eyes remained closed. “It is the cologne that you wore the night of the Assembly Rooms ball. And cigar smoke, but on your coat only. And whiskey on your mouth.”

“I kissed you not an hour ago. You cheat.”

“I observe,” she murmured sleepily, but her lips curved. He wanted to caress their beauty with his fingertips, then to taste her on his tongue.

“Cologne, cigars, whiskey,” he said. “And what else does that clever nose of yours discern now?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“Your scent. Your skin. As though brilliant sun soaked through leather and only heat remained.”

His heart beat too swiftly.

“If I had never met you again after Fellsbourne, Frederick Evan Sterling,” she said, “I would have remembered the scent of your skin all my life.”

He gripped the back of his neck with his fingers. “You know, this isn't making it any easier for me to forsake my husbandly rights tonight.”

“I cannot stop you from claiming those rights.”

He leaned back, propping himself on the mattress with his hand. “With such an invitation, how could a man resist?”

“Why do you resist?” Her eyes opened. “Why don't you claim your rights now?”

“Because as well as your flesh, I would have your consent. Your enthusiastic consent.”

She stared at him. “You are so honest.”

“Mostly.”

“It confuses me.” Her body seemed to vibrate beneath the coverlet. “I have lived in pretense for so long, kept company with men pretending to be who they are not. I know French, Italian, and German. I even read a bit of code—”

“
Code?
”

“And yet I hardly know how to understand you.”

Her agitation robbed him of humor. She was like a deer frightened into paralysis by a hunter's approach. But he thought he understood. This magnificent woman, so certain of herself, mistrusted men. And she feared being touched. In the stable when he had reached for her . . . in the ballroom when he had held her to him . . . and her hands forcing him to give her pleasure at the Assembly Rooms. When she took, she did not fear. When he tried to take, she balked.

His chest was tight. “You did not scent me out like a hound a moment ago to say this to me.”

“No. As ever with you, I have said too much that I did not intend to say.”

“Not enough, in truth. But I am a patient man.”

“Are you?”

“What will you have of me now, my lady?”

“Will you help me, still? Will you help me search for the Devil's lair now that you needn't?”

He regarded her for a stretched moment before he was
able again to speak. “What a peculiar idea of marriage you have.”

“Do you mock me?”

“Was your attention elsewhere in church earlier? Did you fail to hear the bishop's words?”

Bewilderment clouded her eyes.

“You are mine, Constance.” His voice scraped over the syllables. “To enjoy. To cherish. To protect. Whatever the duration of the vows we spoke today, and for whatever reasons they were spoken, while those vows endure I will honor them.”

Her fingers tightened around the bedclothes.

“And,” he added with a shrug, “I know you will proceed with your mission whether I assist you or not.”

“I will.”

“So you can understand my motive. A man has his pride to maintain, after all. Can't have my wife traipsing about Edinburgh's seamy underside while I'm reclining in ducal splendor, sipping sherry and growing gouty. What would people say?”

“That my father bought you.” She said it baldly. “They would say that any man I should rightly have wed—a man like Loch Irvine—would not have allowed me to continue the scandalously independent life to which I am accustomed. But that you, penniless and easily persuaded, were happy to accept the terms of my freedom that I demanded of my father as a condition of my hasty marriage. They would say that as long as the portion the marriage contract promised to you was sufficient to keep you in brandy and shiny new swords for the rest of your days, you would allow me whatever rein I demanded.”

He crossed his arms. “That about sums it up.”

“You are a scoundrel.”

“But a proud scoundrel.” He grinned a little.

“Saint.”

“Constance?”

“You should go now.”

“Why? Are you on the verge of throwing yourself into my arms, despite your intention to remain a chaste spouse?”

“Yes.”

He smiled.

“Damn you,” she whispered, her eyes alight. And then she damned him in deed. She rose, the bedclothes falling to her waist, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, sank her face into the crook of his shoulder, and pressed her body to his. She was warm and soft—
dear God
, so soft—and lithe and strong, her hold on him certain. His hands found her back, his nose the fragrant depths of her hair, and he held her as she wished to be held, and as he needed to hold her, tightly to him.

“I don't think you understand that this is something of a challenge for me,” he said, rather strained, caressing the cascade of her hair over the curve of her spine. Her breasts against his chest seized his reason and restraint and buried them both in his groin. “Beautiful woman.” The woman he had wanted for years. “Scantily clad. In my bed.” His hands slipped beneath her arms and he allowed his thumbs to stroke the voluptuous curve of her breasts. He groaned into her hair and felt her shudder.

“I have wanted to ask you something,” she said somewhat breathlessly.

“Ask.”

“Why did you go to Loch Irvine that morning? After the ball.”

He laughed.

“
Why?
” she said.

“I didn't want you to marry him, obviously.”

“Thank you,” her lush lips whispered against his jaw, driving fingers of lust straight to his cock. “Thank you.”

“Good God,” he uttered. “You will make this impossible for me, won't you?”

She broke from him. Cheeks flushed, she heaved in tight breaths.

“Take me now.” Her teeth clamped together. “Do it.”

“Take you?” came from deep in his throat.

“Have done with it.” Her eyes were full of fear.

He backed off the mattress and jerked to his feet. His hands needed the sensation of anything but her; he raked them through his hair.

“Actually, I don't think I will.”

“
Do it.
I beg of you.” A tear slipped down her cheek.

“Tomorrow, in the light of day, ideally from across a room, and from behind a screen where I cannot quite see you, and most certainly where I cannot touch you,” he said slowly, firmly, “you will tell me the truth of this.”

In the candlelight her eyes flashed. “You make me a fool. Would you prefer that I grovel? Shall I go to my knees?”

His aching cock responded too readily to the suggestion. “Constance—”

“You want me to be weak. In your power.”

“I want you, yes,” he said. “I have wanted you since before I knew your name. I have dreamed every scenario imaginable of having you. This was not one of them. Good night.”

He went through the dressing room into the adjoining bedchamber. Dragging a wooden chair before the fire, he took up his sword and sat with his palm tight around the handle. When the flames faded, he refurbished the fire. He avoided the bed in this unfamiliar room. Instead he settled into the hard chair and wished for something to skewer.

C
onstance stood calmly as her maid buttoned her into her riding habit, arranged her hair in a chignon beneath a matching hat, and tweaked the collars on the crisp white shirt beneath her coat. Through the dressing room doorway her eyes followed the chambermaids' coy glances as they made up the bed. They would find no blood on the sheets, no evidence of her discarded maidenhood. But they would not have found that even if her desperate pleas had met with her husband's acceptance.

“Where is Mr. Sterling?”

“He's gone riding, milady. Mr. Viking laid out breeches and boots this morning.”

The idea of Saint accepting a valet's ministrations was too delicious. She would like to see him disconcerted by servile attention.

She stretched gloves over her fingers and went to bid her friends good-bye. When they had all departed, with promises to meet again in the autumn, she retrieved Elfhame from the stable.

She found her husband along the Water of Leith, the new green of spring making a bower alongside the river. Mounted on his fine horse, he was a man at ease. When he saw her, a glimmer lit his eyes that reflected the verdant riverbank.

“Hail, Madam Sterling,” he said in the hot brandy voice that had always unhinged her. “I trust that your chaste repose in our wedding bower satisfied you.”

“And I trust that the haggard pale of your face now reflects an equally satisfying rest on your part.”

He laid his palm upon his chest. “You cut me, lady.”

“I do?”

“Women are not the only creatures dependent upon flattery. A man doesn't like to be told he is anything less than devastatingly handsome.”

He was devastatingly handsome. Not in the manner of the men she usually knew, with their white skin and soft hands that were evidence of their aristocratic indolence. Frederick Sterling was hard, taut, and lean. There was nothing soft about him, nothing pampered or civilized—or even shaven. He wore the whiskers around his mouth like the men of her society wore signet rings proclaiming their noble family trees: like a badge of his masculinity.

“I have no doubt that your confidence remains intact,” she said, “despite me.”

He said nothing in response. The air between them hung with the fire-lit incompletion of the night.

“With those words, I intended you to recall my rejection last night,” she clarified.

“I did understand that.” He smiled slightly. “Your victory, however, is flat. Like my wife, my confidence remains unpricked.”

She almost laughed aloud. “Does it?”

His eyes were lazy, self-satisfied, exaggeratedly so. “You begged.”

“It was late.” She gestured blithely. “I was delirious.”

“You seemed lucid enough to me.” He folded his hands over the saddle's pommel. “But what of today, wife? What
responsibilities does my new role require of me?” His gaze slipped from her eyes to her lips, and then to the front of her coat where it lingered. “Responsibilities for which I am not already eager.”

“You can say nothing that will shock me, sir.”

“I am not trying to shock you. I am trying to arouse you. You look especially fetching in that ensemble. I would like to remove it from you piece by piece. With my teeth.”

“What would you say if I told you that your teasing has the opposite effect of arousing me?”

“I would say that you need to practice truth-telling.”

His tone did not alter, but she thought these words were not spoken idly.

“There will be callers today. Many,” she said, urging Elfhame away.

“Callers who are to be held upon the grill of genteel prying?” His horse's hooves sounded on the path behind.

“At the Assembly Rooms ball Sir Lorian spoke to me of a private society to which only married couples are admitted. He told me that the members of this society enjoy especially sophisticated entertainments, and that when I wed he would contrive an invitation for me. It could be the club that everyone associates with the Devil's Duke. It is possible that Mr. and Mrs. Westin are also members. There must be others. We must tease them out.”

“Ah. The fog begins to clear.” The smile had disappeared.

“You should change your clothes before they arrive.”

“The crème de la crème of Edinburgh society does not care for the aroma of the mews, I suppose. Not even the secretly deviant crème?”

She chewed on her lip. “We shall see, I suppose.”

“Constance.”

She turned in the saddle to him as he came beside her.

“You will not hide anything from me,” he said.

“Hide?”

“Nothing of this investigation. Make me a confidant of the intimate secrets of your past, or not; that must be as you
wish it. But of this charade we play for the sake of the dregs of polite society, and of what you learn, I will not allow you to withhold information.”

“What good would it do me to withhold information from you? I would not have allied myself with you to begin with if I did not think your skills would be useful.” She heard her father in her own words and they tasted sour upon her tongue.

He ran a hand over his jaw. “Not exactly the response I hoped for.”

“You are distracted by your lust.”

“I wish to protect you. I cannot do so if you don't tell me everything.” He said it simply, sincerely.

She fought the warmth that he made inside her.

“There was a man,” she heard herself say without any plan for what she would say next. “He—” The sounds of the woods grew agitated, bird cries shrill, whirls of noise and scents too strong. “I . . .” Over the frantic burble of the river, her heart throbbed. “He hurt me.”

“Enough for you to fear me.”

“I do not fear you.”

“You feared me last night. Was it Doreé?”

“No. Not Ben. Never him.”

“Tell me who he is. I would like to teach him a lesson.”

“He is beyond your reach now.”

He stretched out his arm and angled it as though testing the distance to the tip of a sword. “I don't know about that. My reach is really very impressive. Everybody says so.”

A smile tugged at her lips. “Your humility is an awesome thing.”

He studied her face, and she watched not his eyes but his mouth. His perfect mouth.

“Wife,” he murmured.

“Why do you call me that?”

“To remind you that I own you,” he said upon a smile. He gestured ahead. “Shall we continue home now, so that I can make myself suitably presentable for those whose souls are less presentable than the soles of these boots?”

She urged Elfhame forward. He would not insist on knowing more. Perhaps she could simply forget now. Perhaps it could be over. But when she glanced back, his eyes fixed on the distance were hard.

“H
ALT THIS INST
ANT!”

Saint jerked the razor away from his jaw. Soap splashed across his coat.

“Damn it.” Being a gentleman was proving inconveniently uncomfortable. He tore off the soggy neck cloth.

Viking, who had announced himself the previous day as “your personal manservant,” now hurried forward.

“You will cut yourself,” he exclaimed. “It is my responsibility to shave you. I demand that you give me that razor and sit.”

Saint took the chair before the dressing table.

“It was my understanding that servants don't give orders,” he said as Viking draped a cloth over his chest. “But perhaps I was wrong. I've only been at this for a day.”

“Upper servants give as many orders as they wish, especially when their masters are ignorant colonials. Lean back, sir.”

“I left Jamaica many years ago, you know.”

Viking slathered more soap on his face. “You clearly spent years there. You are as brown as a sailor.” He whisked the razor over Saint's cheek with the lightest touch. “You should have told me this morning that you intended to do away with this monstrosity. I would have prepared a warm compress before the shaving, then mixed a refreshing lotion to apply afterward.”

Saint forbore laughing. He knew the danger of a blade in the hand of a man who wielded it well. When Viking had wiped clean his jaw, he perused him skeptically.

“You appear marginally more civilized, sir.”

Saint ran his hand over the tender skin. He had always worn the whiskers spare, but he had not gone without them in years. He took up his coat. The valet snatched it out of
his hands and produced a fresh cravat. By the time he descended to the drawing room, he imagined he looked something like he should.

Several callers had already arrived. Constance sat at the tea table, the women around her chatting merrily as they assessed her, each other, and him when he entered. Lady Easterberry had the gall to effuse over their wedding.

There were men aplenty among the callers. In especially high spirits since their visit to London, Dylan made introductions. Saint found Lady Easterberry's son-in-law, Mr. Westin, repugnant. From a modest family, he had invested wisely in coal and now anticipated a title. Soft of both chin and waist, he had the joie de vivre of mutton stew. Sir Lorian Hughes and his gorgeous young wife arrived mid afternoon. Expensively dressed and cocksure, Hughes spoke with an affected drawl and looked too long and too intimately at Constance.

After a bit, Lady Hughes drew Saint aside.

“I waited for you to call on me the day after the ball at the Assembly Rooms,” she said.

“I was obliged to travel to London unexpectedly.”

“Of course,” she purred.

Everyone was pretending that Constance had not been on the verge of a betrothal to someone else. It was surprisingly amusing and he might have laughed if his bride would not have taken it amiss. But perhaps she wanted to laugh too. There was always a hint of laughter about her lips, even when her eyes showed fear, as though within her a battle raged, as she had said.

Lady Hughes followed the direction of his gaze. “I commend you on your conquest.”

“I am a fortunate man.”

“She is beautiful.”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Westin came to them and offered Saint a thin smile.

“Miranda,” she said. “I must go to the shops tomorrow. Will you join me?”

“Certainly, darling,” the beauty said. “Lorian demands new shirts and I haven't the energy to sew any part of them myself lately. I will enjoy an outing with you poking through linens.” She swept him from chin to boots with her dark eyes. “Perhaps Mr. Sterling could escort us, if Constance can spare him?”

Mrs. Westin's cheeks flushed. “Do you care to join us, Mr. Sterling?”

“I would be honored,” he said, and wondered how long he would have to endure this sort of thing before the end.

E
VERYONE BUT TWO
women departed, and they settled into a cozy conversation with Constance. Saint went to find his cousin. A footman had beckoned Dylan from the room earlier with a message; but he was a social creature and it was unlike him not to have returned.

Dylan stood in the foyer, his face ashen.

“I've just spoken with Edwards. He came here to find me—to speak with me—good God.” He dragged his fingers through his hair and clutched his head. “What am I to do?”

Saint gestured him up the stairs and into his private chamber.

“Has Edwards rejected your suit, despite Tor's money?”

“No, God, Saint. He—He came here because he'd just heard I'd returned to Edinburgh. He'd thought I left her there—that I had taken her off.”

“Taken her off?”

“Eloped with her! The morning after Loch Irvine's party, she went to her aunt's house, as I told you. Her parents have thought her there these past three weeks. But five days ago her aunt sent a letter wondering when Chloe would arrive.” His eyes were wild. “She is
gone
. Disappeared! Edwards came here just now to beg me to bring her back. He said he'd let me marry her, that he only wants to know she's well. He thought I'd absconded with her. I'll admit I thought about it. But I would never
do
such a thing. She's a lady and she is to be my wife. My baroness.” His voice broke.

“Her parents and aunt have no idea where she has gone?”

“None! I think I convinced Edwards that I didn't have her hidden away somewhere. But, good God, Saint, if I don't know where she is, and they don't . . . nearly
four weeks
. I could see my thoughts in Edwards's eyes. She is nineteen, just the age of those girls . . .
those girls
.” His brow grew dark. “I will murder that diabolical duke. With my bare hands. Before this day is over.”

Saint strapped on his sword. “We will go together.”

T
HE
D
UKE OF
Loch Irvine was away from home. No one answered the door and the butcher at a shop nearby said there hadn't been an order from the house in ten days. They went to the stable and learned from a hand that ten days earlier the duke had set out in his traveling chaise laden with luggage, his saddle horse in tow. He was not expected to return for several weeks.

“My God,” Dylan said. “She could be off with him to God knows where! Or she could be—” He heaved breaths. “She could be
in the loch
.”

“Not yet. The girls went missing after equinoxes and the solstice. It is nearly two months till the summer solstice. If she is a prisoner now, we will find her before then.”

Dylan gaped at him. “What's that about?”

“Constance has been investigating the abductions.”

“
Investigating?
After Loch Irvine broke it off with her? Woman-scorned sort of nastiness?”

“No. All along.”

“Good God. This is grim.” His brow pleated with misery. “What else haven't you been telling me?”

“Write to your friends in London. And Glasgow. York. Anywhere Miss Edwards might have gone. She could be with a friend.”