This Rake of Mine (26 page)

He couldn't say as much for his own luck as he felt Grey shudder and grow still in his arms.

There was only one chance for them now, and with the tide nearing the high mark, he didn't have much time.

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M
iranda discovered that sleep was anything but easily gained that night. Lying in bed, she glanced over at the window, where the shades were parted slightly and the moon was sending in a sliver of light.

The wind was blowing, and a branch from the untrimmed roses that grew up the side of the house banged against the pane, tapping like the staccato questions hammering away at her curiosity.

Where had he gone?

Oh, bother! She had no business caring how Jack spent his nights—doing who-knows-what with who-knows-whom, but it didn't escape her that it must have been him that she'd spied the other evening stealing into the darkness—a phantom for certain, a ghost from her past, a thief capable of stealing hearts.

Was that where he went at night? To some illicit tryst?

She heaved a sigh. That wouldn't surprise her. Even in this empty countryside, she had to imagine that Mad Jack Tremont did not lack for conquests.

She, for one, could vouch for his skill, limited though her experience was.

"Whatever are you thinking, Miranda Mabberly?" she chastened herself. She tossed in the bed and pounded the pillow into a more comfortable position.

The man is the devil himself. Better avoided and forgotten.

Forgotten.

She rolled over again.
Forget about him
.

She hadn't in nine years, so she didn't see why tonight would be any different.

Shutting her eyes tight, she unsuccessfully willed herself to sleep… until, that is, a thought of what sleep could offer tempted her to relax: dreams… dreams that she could only find in the darkness of night, in the arms of Queen Mab.

And eventually she did fall asleep, drifting off into the embrace of a dark-haired man who bound her in his grasp and whispered of the dangerous passions they would share… somewhere, swirling in the mist, she heard the roar of cannons, the sharp retort of guns, echoing like the thunder of the storm that had brought her back to Jack.

"Miss Porter, Miss Porter, wake up!"

The cry in her ear and the violent tugging by three sets of hands roused Miranda out of the restless slumber into which she'd fallen.

"What is it?" she managed. "Whatever is the matter?" She glanced over at Felicity, who was white as a sheet. "Are you having one of your megrims?"

The girl shook her head. "Listen, Miss Porter. There is something very wrong."

The three girls fell uncharacteristically silent, and Miranda shook the last vestiges of sleep from her cloudy thoughts and did the same.

For a few moments the house held all the quiet of a grave, until an unearthly cry rose from somewhere deep in the manor.

It was a cry of agony and pain that tore at the heart.

"The curse!" Thalia gasped. "I knew it the first I heard it. Just as Sir Norris told us."

" 'Tis no curse," Miranda told her, rising from the bed and reaching for her wrapper, "but someone in trouble."

The girls didn't look so convinced, especially when another howl rose through the night.

"Whatever should we do?" Pippin asked.

"You three shall go back into your room and bolt the door behind me."

"
Behind you? "
Felicity asked.

"Yes, behind me." Miranda grabbed up a shawl and threw it over her wrapper. "I will go see if I can be of assistance."

"But the curse—" Tally said, catching Miranda by the sleeve with a grip that could have put a blacksmith to shame.

"Tally, I cannot believe you are paying any heed to what Sir Norris said," Miranda told her, disengaging the girl's frantic grasp. "Ladies of refinement give no credence to such falderal. A lady—a lady of breeding—offers her calm reassurance and able assistance in such situations."

Miranda went to the door and had her hand on the latch when another cry of wretched agony rent the night.

Perhaps it would be better to stay with the girls…

But her curiosity and sense of duty outweighed her fears. "Lock the door behind me and don't let anyone in, save me or Mr. Birdwell." Of all of Jack's odd staff, Miranda felt that Mr. Birdwell was probably the most respectable.

If there was such a thing in this madhouse.

The girls nodded, and Miranda paused outside in the hall until she heard the latch click and the bolt slide in place. Clutching her candle, she proceeded down the stairs, wondering with some trepidation if she was about to discover the secrets that Thistleton Park held in its dark shadows.

Jack held a half empty bottle of brandy in one hand, a candle in the other.

"I don't like the look of this," Birdwell said. He caught hold of Jack's arm and drew it closer. "Hold the candle right there. I need all the light I can get."

The three men were bent over Jack's desk, which had been cleared and turned into an impromptu surgery. Atop it lay Malcolm Grey, his shirt torn open to reveal the hideous evidence of a gunshot that had left a gaping wound from which Birdwell was endeavoring to remove the bullet and the missing piece of shirt.

Malcolm was fighting their efforts, but whether it was the pain or the specter of death that he battled, Jack didn't know.

"Hold him still, Mr. Jones," Birdwell snapped. "I haven't done this in some time."

"He must live, Birdwell," Jack said, adding his own weight to Bruno's to keep his friend still. "He must."

Grey had taught him much in the last four years, saved his life twice when Jack had waded headlong into folly. "Malcolm is one of our best agents. We've got to save him. If he's come back to England, he's most likely discovered who's been selling us out."

"I'm trying, my lord," Birdwell said, "but he's lost a lot of blood." He probed the wound further, then pulled out the bullet, dropping the piece of lead onto the desk.

Jack felt a moment of elation. Malcolm would survive. He had to. But the bullet was followed by a rush of blood.

Birdwell swore, the word itself a shock to hear from the always proper man. "It's like I feared. He's been nicked where it can't be fixed."

"What do you mean—can't be fixed?" Jack put his hand over the wound to stop the flow. He didn't want to hear Birdwell's sigh of resignation. Instead, he put every ounce of strength into holding onto his friend, willing his heartbeat to guide Malcolm out of the icy grasp of death.

But everything that could have gone wrong tonight just seemed to get worse, for Malcolm's tormented cries stilled, until there was nothing left of the man who had always seemed larger than life.

As Jack watched his friend die, the bottle of brandy slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor beside him.

Once that would have seemed the greatest disaster of his day, the loss of such a fine French vintage, but tonight he would have tossed a hundred cases of it over the cliffs to save his friend.

Oh, whatever was he to do now?

Even as the human cost of war rose to face him yet again, a knock on the door banged into his grief, into his personal pain.

An insistent, meddling sort of pounding.

"Lord John, is everything well?"

"Blimey," Bruno whispered. "It's
her
."

Miss Porter?
Jack struggled up out of the blinding fog of grief. He glanced at the door and then at the scene that would meet her eye if she dared enter the room uninvited.

"The door is locked," Birdwell said quietly. "I thought it prudent when you brought Mr. Grey in."

Jack nodded. Leave it to Birdwell to get the details right.

The pounding came again. "Lord John, are you in there?"

"Women!" Bruno said under his breath. "Curious as cats and just as troublesome."

"I've got to get rid of her," Jack said. "She can't see this." He turned in a daze and ran into an end table that held their medical kit. It sent the metal instruments and bottles tumbling in a clatter to the floor.

If anything, the sharp sound of the metal hitting the oak floors and the return of Miss Porter's knocking worked to clear his head. He went toward the door, determined to get rid of her.

"My lord," Birdwell hissed.

Jack glanced over at him.

The butler nodded at his jacket.

He looked down to find his coat stained in blood. Malcolm's last evidence of life. Wrenching off his ruined coat, he tossed it aside. "Douse the lights," he ordered.

With the room cast in shadows, he opened the door and forced his way out, pushing the persistent lady aside even as she tried to gain entry.

"Miss Porter?" he said, trying his best to sound surprised. "What are you doing lurking about? Hardly proper, is it? Why, I thought you and your charges had sought your beds hours ago."

She held her candle up high and gave him a searching glance, seeking answers and suspecting everything.

"So it seemed. Until we were awakened by a most grievous noise—" She arched a brow and awaited his explanation.

"Awakened? How unfortunate." He used every ounce of aristocratic nerve he had gained from watching his brother, the Duke of Parkerton, snub any and all who expected him to be forthcoming. "My apologies, Miss Porter. Now if you will excuse me—"

He tried to leave, but she wasn't about to be dismissed so easily.

"Sir, I heard, I mean, we
all
heard, a most dreadful cry. Several of them."

Jack shook his head. "Nothing more than a man complaining when he's on a losing streak. 'Tis just me and a few acquaintances playing a little too deep. Drinking a little too much." He stepped closer until her nose wrinkled at the convincing smell of brandy that surrounded him.

"Sir, that is not what I heard. I heard a man in pain. In agony, and not from losing his last quid," she insisted. Once again, she shot a glance over his shoulder at the door behind him. "If there is someone hurt, perhaps I can be of assistance."

Demmit
. They had heard too much. But he couldn't confess the truth. Not to anyone. Not now that another of England's agents had been murdered.

"Cries of agony?" Jack shook his head. "Really, Miss Porter, I didn't take you for the fanciful sort… this is twice in as many nights you've come down here with these strange assertions. Have you always been prone to nightmares?"

Her brow arched in defiance, a defiance that he'd certainly never seen in a mere schoolteacher. Why, she had the look of Boadicea, standing there in her nightrail, her candle held like a sword ready for battle.

"Lord John, I am not a woman prone to flights of fancy. Nor am I to be naysaid, especially when I have the welfare of those girls to consider. If there is anything improper going on, I insist—"

Improper
. His friend had just died and she was out here nattering on about propriety—as if it mattered.

He'd like to tell her what improper was. Improper was good men like Malcolm Grey lost forever. Improper was enemies who would go to any means to see England fall.

He'd like nothing more than to show her what was improper and unjust about the world outside of Miss Emery's hallowed walls, outside the protective shell of London Society. The devil take her—didn't she know it wasn't proper for a lady, an unmarried one at that, to go wandering about a man's house in the middle of the night?

Highly improper.

He snatched the candleholder from her hand and stuck it on a nearby table. With barely a pause, he caught her in his arms and hauled her close—right up to his chest, his hands taking every liberty that the freedom of being in one's own home, in the middle of the night, allowed him.

This wasn't right, this was so very wrong. But this night had seemed to be cast by a very different set of rules.

And there was Miss Porter. A woman was a woman, he reasoned, and after so long of being away from the blessed sanctuary they offered a man, he was like one starving as he nuzzled her neck, inhaled her innocent perfume.

His grief pushed him well past proper. Past nobility and honor. Tonight, he was no gentleman.

And she felt like heaven. He went hard, rock hard, as her breasts pressed against him. Soft and round and warm, where his night had been cold and sharp. He knew how they would fit in his hand, how the peaks would rise under his touch, under his tongue. And so he did—touch her—cradling a breast, the weight like gold beneath his burning grasp. His fingers curled around it, seeking and finding that pebbled summit, rising beneath his touch.

"Oooh," she gasped.

He glanced down at her and saw the look of shock in her eyes. A look that burned with outrage… and something else.

If it had been only outrage that he'd spied there in the light of her blue eyes, he might have stopped. But there was more to Miss Porter's chagrin.

There was passion. An undeniable passion.

The flame in her eyes drew him like a moth. So that even as her mouth sputtered open to protest, he covered it with his and tasted bliss.

A long-unsated hunger filled him. So he kissed her soundly. Thoroughly. His tongue teased at her lips, swiped aside her requisite objections.

He'd spent the last four years trying to make amends, trying to do the right thing, and the cost was just too much to bear.

His grief and anger and fears poured forth, fueling needs that surprised even him.

His hand found the small of her back and pushed it inward, so she rode right up against him. Could feel every bit of his need, would understand the dangers of the night, wouldn't make this same mistake—of wandering about—again.

Tugging at her nightrail, he pulled it up, baring her legs, her thighs, so his hand could caress her there. Could tease her to open up for him, so he could feel the very heat, the evidence of her passion.

She struggled anew, if in shock at what he was doing or out of propriety, he couldn't tell. But he wasn't about to let go of her, he wasn't going to stop kissing her until… until he heard the capitulation that was his triumph, a softly given moan escaping her lips like a traitor.