To Lure a Proper Lady (8 page)

Dysart went to her, fighting an urge to replace Elizabeth's arms with his own. “What's Caruthers about in there? Do you know?”

“He'll…he'll give Papa his special tonic. He'll stay in there until Papa's better. And…and if he's not…” Her voice broke.

The devil take it. Dysart couldn't stop himself from closing the distance between them. He'd only meant to pat her shoulder or some such, but somehow she ended up in his arms. One palm molded itself to the back of her head. The strands of her hair flowed through his fingers, as soft as fine velvet.

Her slight body trembled against his chest. “I…I thought…I thought it was over. I thought perhaps he'd acted all those episodes I'd witnessed.”

“That wasn't acting.” He hated to confirm her worries, but life had taught him to face the truth head-on.

“I wanted it to be. I figured he only wanted to push us to hold the party.”

Madness. “Isn't that taking extreme measures for a party?”

“He wants us married, all three of us. We're meant to choose husbands and bring them up to scratch.” Her floral-scented hair wasn't the only soft thing about her. Her whole damned perfect body was pliant against his. Parts of him were achingly aware that nothing stood between him and her bare skin but a few yards of flimsy white fabric.

His fist tightened in her hair.
Concentrate.
“I need you to tell me everything that's happened. Who else has been in to see the duke tonight?”

“Sven. He was here earlier, but you saw that. The servants come and go. Otherwise, no one.”

“No one besides Pendleton.”

She shifted in his embrace, but the movement only served to press her luscious breasts against his chest. “I told you already. Pendleton startled me.”

“Was he coming in or going out?”

She raised her head. “Must we talk about this now?”

Yes.
It was either question her or kiss her. Her lips hovered inches from his. One small dip of his head and he could claim them. His body clamored for that very action. It clamored for more. But he knew better. Involvement with her would only leave her ruined.

“Afraid so. In or out?”

“I…” She drew her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don't know. He…he was halfway across the room when I woke up and spotted him.”

Concentrate.
“Think. Was he facing the duke's bedchamber or the corridor?”

“I…” Again that gesture that made him want to bite her damnable lip for her. “I don't remember. He was facing me, I think.”

As it had earlier, his fury spiked. “Bloody hell.”

“I don't think he expected to find me,” she hurried on. “Maybe he noticed me and startled and that's what woke me.” She paused. Despite the dimness, he caught the ripple along her throat as she swallowed. “You can't think Pendleton's done something to Papa. Not all this time?”

“I don't know, but I intend to find out.”

Lizzie turned on the narrow sofa in Papa's sitting room but couldn't find a comfortable position. Her ears kept straining in the direction of the closed door that led to the bedchamber. Dysart had left, but Caruthers still hadn't come out.

At least Papa was no longer emitting those gut-wrenching groans of pain. She ought to be relieved, but the silence was somehow worse. It called images of graveyards to mind.

She stood and wrapped herself in a blanket. This would never do. If she couldn't sleep, she may as well try to write—as long as she could concentrate on her manuscript. Naturally those pages were stashed in her writing desk in one of the smaller parlors on the other side of the house. She could wait for Caruthers to emerge and send him after them, or she could go herself. Now.

The plush carpet was soft under her bare feet as she crossed the floor. She turned the handle and pulled up short, clutching the blanket to her throat. Why hadn't she thought to put on a wrapper, like any respectable young lady?

Dysart leaned against the opposite wall, his stance in direct defiance of his rumpled evening clothes. In fact, his manner sent her back to the day she first met him on Bow Street—shoulders flat to the plaster, one knee bent, the sole of his boot to the wainscoting. With deft fingers, he flipped an unlit cheroot, turning it end over end.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “I thought you'd be for bed.” Or so she'd assumed when he'd disengaged himself earlier.

“Not with Pendleton about.”

“You're standing guard?”

His shoulders hitched against their support. “It seemed prudent. I didn't think you'd care for another surprise.”

Not just standing guard, then. He was standing guard over
her.
She watched the cheroot flick from finger to finger once more, and thought of those digits combing through her hair.

Warmth dripped into her midsection as it had earlier when he comforted her, with one difference. This time, it started deep inside and radiated out to her limbs.

“You…” She swallowed against a dry throat. “You can't spend the duration of the party acting as sentry.”

“I ain't taking chances on Pendleton.” The roughness had returned to his speech. He'd managed the entire evening in front of the other guests without a single slip. In fact, he'd sounded just like he belonged in a duke's manor and not somewhere decidedly east of Mayfair.

Once again, she wondered at his origins. In which role was he acting—as Lord Dysart of Edinburgh or as Dysart the Bow Street Runner?

“How do you know him?”

“Old history.” With a wave of his hand, Dysart slipped the cheroot into his topcoat. “Best forgotten, but as long as Pendleton is under this roof, I can't let you traipse about the house at night.”

“But it's my house.” It wasn't, technically, but Dysart knew what she meant.

“What are you about?”

“I couldn't sleep. I thought…I thought…”

She couldn't bring herself to admit anything so frivolous as her attempt to write a novel. Not to a man who earned his living catching criminals. He did things that
mattered,
dash it all, while she…scribbled when she wasn't entertaining guests or solving disasters in the kitchen. It was the lot of a woman of her rank, but even those activities struck her as unworthy.

“I only meant to catch up on some correspondence,” she finished lamely. That excuse didn't strike her as any better.

“Perhaps if you'd sleep in a proper bed.” His tone took on a gravelly note, and he drew out the single syllable in
bed
until it sounded downright indecent.

The warmth she'd experienced just now exploded into outright heat, a heat that somehow reflected in his eyes, like sparks about to burst into flame.

“I would, but mine is occupied.”

“Mine's not.”

Those two simple words sucked all the air from the passage—or at least her lungs. She gasped, as once more she relived the strength of his arm muscles surrounding her. Rippling biceps and corded forearms, long fingers splayed across her shoulder blades, pressing her close.

Heavens, why did he have to mention beds? Especially ones awaiting occupants. And not her alone. The both of them. Together. Unclothed. Pure heat raced up her cheeks.

“You cannot have just suggested anything so scandalous.” She fought to keep her reply cool. Detached.

The glint in his eye told her he knew exactly what she was thinking, down to every last improper detail. “Where is the scandal if I am here and you are on the other end of the house?”

“All I'd need is for Lady Whitby to spot me coming out of your bedchamber and I'll be ruined.”

He pushed away from the wall, closing the distance between them. “If you're lucky, tonight's events will have affronted her enough that she leaves.”

“I don't possess that sort of luck.” If she did, her papa wouldn't be pushing her cousin at her as a desirable suitor.

“In that case, you should go back where you came from. If Lady Whitby caught you wandering the corridors in a state of undress, your reputation would still suffer.”

Without a doubt, Lady Whitby was inventing excuses to stay on and collect enough gossip to occupy her tongue for the next decade. She could easily spend a Season or two embellishing tales of Lady Elizabeth Wilde's late night wanderings.

Despite his admonishment, Dysart put out a hand. His fingertips slipped down Lizzie's arm, raising gooseflesh in their passing. Thank goodness the blanket separated her flesh from his, because if he'd touched her directly, skin to skin, she didn't know what she'd do.

As it was, that simple brush awakened a longing in her for something more tangible. Like his fingers wrapped about her wrist, his arms drawing her closer, the solidity of his chest pressed to her body. His lips…

No, she shouldn't think about his lips, nor how they might feel against hers, moving, coaxing, seducing.

“There's so much about this that's wrong.” Frustration honed his muttered statement to a fine edge. “You should go in.”

Only after the door closed behind her, the firmness of the wood supporting her back, did she think to wonder. What, exactly, did he think was wrong? Lady Whitby and her hysteria over propriety or something more personal? Something like an attraction that crossed social boundaries.

Attraction. She rolled the word about in her mind, and it felt at once right and wrong. For Dysart drew her more than any man of her own rank ever had.

The scents of leather and saddle soap wafted in from the tack room to combine with the clean smell of hay. Together, they almost masked the earthy undertone of horse manure. Dysart edged along a wall opposite a row of empty box stalls, his attention fixed on the shadows ahead.

It was nearly time for the stable boys to rouse and see to the feeding and grooming of their charges, but in the rising pre-dawn light, another figure was stealing along the aisle toward the occupied stalls.

Pendleton, damn his eyes. If, after everything that had happened last night, the bastard planned to escape, he could think again.

A bony head poked its nose over the door of its box and let out a snort. Dysart froze, flattening himself against the wall, but Pendleton paid no heed. No doubt he thought the beast was reacting to his intrusion.

Dysart craned his neck as Pendleton lifted the latch on a box at the far end of the row. With a quick glance about, he entered the stall. Straw rustled. A soft whicker.

Dysart tiptoed closer. What was the scoundrel about? He'd have a job of sneaking away, as he had no saddle or bridle.

One step. Another. Still, Pendleton did not emerge. And what had he claimed to wish to discuss with Sherrington last night? Something about a horse.

At last Dysart reached the end of the row. Pendleton stood in the midst of a roomy box, his attention fixed on the occupant, a dark-coated steed with a blaze of white down its nose. Pendleton raised a hand and stroked the proudly muscled neck lovingly.

“Yes, there you are,” he crooned. “They haven't even had the decency to hide you away. As if they thought I couldn't tell.”

Dysart cleared his throat. “You realize horse stealing is a hanging offense.”

Pendleton jumped back, and the horse tossed its head. “What the hell are you doing here?” Pendleton demanded.

Dysart shoved his hands under his armpits and rested his shoulders against the neighboring stall. “It seems to me that poor beast needs a chaperone, the way you're eyeing it. I'm beginning to fear for its virtue.”

He shouldn't provoke Pendleton, not if he wanted to find out the bastard's business with the duke, but some perverse impulse rose within to push and push again.

Jaw set, Pendleton turned from the horse and let himself out of the stall. The latch fell back into place with a loud
clank
that caused more than one of the stables' residents to toss their manes. “Are you itching so badly to be called out?”

Dysart settled his shoulders more comfortably. “You wouldn't call me out over this. The only audience to appreciate any insult is in no position to repeat it.”

In a single stride, Pendleton closed the gap and twisted his fists in Dysart's lapels. “I could still call you out over your insinuations last night.”

Up and down the row, horses snorted. One kicked its stall with a resonant
thud.

Dysart met the other man's glare head-on. “I'm not sure anyone would say I was in the wrong. Not when I've caught you sneaking about the place. I believe this makes twice now. I'd say I've got quite the case that you've something to hide. Or at least you've another reason to be here than simply to attend a house party.”

The muscles in Pendleton's jaw bunched, and he shifted his grip, holding Dysart's topcoat with one hand. He hauled back a fist.

Just in time, Dysart ducked the blow, and Pendleton's knuckles smashed into a wooden beam. More horses moved restlessly within their confines. Another kick echoed through the space.

“Temper, temper.” Dysart straightened and balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to dodge. If it came to a fight, he was more than happy to oblige. The streets of the East End had taught him more than one trick that would see Pendleton begging for his mama in a trice.

But Pendleton merely emitted a string of curses and shook out his hand. “You're awfully confident for a man who just yesterday asked me not to reveal his past,
Gus.
”

“That's because you've far more to lose than I do.”
Raping bastard.
“Don't forget, I know just what sort of man you are.” He couldn't help himself. A memory, more than a decade old, flashed through his mind, and he threw a punch.

Pendleton dodged. “And what's that?”

“A coward. One who has to misuse a woman to prove what a man he is.”

This time Dysart wasn't fast enough. A growl was all the warning he got before Pendleton's blow slammed into his jaw with the force of a sledgehammer, snapping his head back.

He stumbled like a drunkard, and stars danced before his eyes, but it wasn't enough. His brain still retained the image of the sobbing maid, her skirts askew, Pendleton straining between her too-thin thighs.

Damn it. Dysart raised his fists and let his anger fuel his punches. Each one he landed produced a grunt, but it still wasn't enough to expunge the memory of the day he hadn't acted. Nor was the pain of Pendleton's jabs of defense. Nor the hardness of the packed earth of the stable when they fell. Nor Pendleton's bulk on top of him.

Dysart wedged a foot beneath him. Pushed. The upward leverage rolled him above his opponent. He took Pendleton's shirt in hand and began to pummel.

“Did you even know her name, you bloody bastard?” he grated between blows.

“Who?” Pendleton spit out the word on a mouthful of blood.

Christ, had there been so many? Dysart drew back his fist for another blow.

“Please, sir.” A new voice, young, accompanied by hands grappling his topcoat.

Not relaxing his grip on Pendleton, Dysart looked around. A gang of wide-eyed youths, roughly dressed, surrounded the combatants.

“Please, you're upsetting our charges.”

He heard it now above the rush of blood in his ears—the restless rustle of straw, snorts, whinnies. Several horses poked their noses over their stall doors, showing the whites of their eyes.

Deliberately holding his hands palms outward, Dysart released Pendleton and stood. A few of the older boys stepped between him and his adversary, who pushed himself upright, brushing dirt and straw from his garments. His lower lip was split, and blood oozed from his nostrils.

Dysart harbored no doubts he looked any more presentable. God, his evening clothes, too. Sherrington's valet was going to have a job setting them aright.

From behind his guards, Pendleton jabbed a finger in Dysart's direction. “This isn't over. Not by a long shot.”

“You keep your filthy hands off the maids.”

“Is that what this is about? That slut?”

Dysart tamped down the urge to launch himself back into the fray and finish the bastard. “That
slut
's name was Sally.”

“What do I care? I trust she gave you as good a ride as she did me.”

Dysart stared at the rafters and counted to ten. Then he went on to fifty for good measure. “I will not discuss this with you.” At least, not here where he could no longer let his fists make his point. “I've got my eye on you. Just don't get any ideas about disappearing suddenly.”

“Now, why would I do that? I haven't yet got what I've come for.”