To Tempt a Saint (30 page)
Authors: Kate Moore
X
ANDER did not release his hold on Cleo, not down the treacherous pipe to the ground, not through the beer-scoured street of reeling revelers, not through a quiet conversation with four bewildered officers who did not know where Will was, only that he had not come to Bread Street.
ANDER did not release his hold on Cleo, not down the treacherous pipe to the ground, not through the beer-scoured street of reeling revelers, not through a quiet conversation with four bewildered officers who did not know where Will was, only that he had not come to Bread Street.
As the search began for victims of the flood, the constable in charge told Xander to go home and wait for Will. Still Xander did not release Cleo’s hand, not in the hack, not up the elegant lighted stairway of the house on Hill Street, not until they entered his dressing room. It was like their trip to the bank before his arrest. They were consumed with a barely constrained need to touch.
He flung open his wardrobe and pressed a man’s brown silk wrapper into her hands. “Wait here.” He kissed her nose.
He was off. She could hear him giving quiet commands, hear Amos hobbling along insisting that he could help. Then she was left to think and feel. Disjointed moments of the day crowded in on her mind. March had tried to kill her. His face and manner and tone in the hack came back to her. Waking in the dark cellar. The details of the fate he’d planned for her. She shuddered from memory, not from the chill of her soaked clothes, and the thought hit her very hard.
He killed you, Papa.
He killed you, Papa.
Only Mrs. Wardlow pressing a cup of hot tea into Cleo’s hands stopped the shudders. She helped Cleo from her ruined shoes and beer-soaked skirts.
“Oh, my poor lady, wot ye’ve been through. We must get ye warm and snug. Ye’ve found Master Kit alive. We are ever so grateful.” Mrs. Wardlow beamed at her. Cleo had never seen the woman smile. She disappeared with the evidence of Bread Street and returned with jugs of hot water.
Cleo tried to name what she felt
. Gratitude
. Likely, Xander Jones felt it, too. She faced the idea squarely as Mrs. Wardlow filled a fragrant, steaming bath. Maybe that is what they would feel for each other. If their marriage proved valid, they would have gratitude and passion. It would not be a bad beginning.
. Gratitude
. Likely, Xander Jones felt it, too. She faced the idea squarely as Mrs. Wardlow filled a fragrant, steaming bath. Maybe that is what they would feel for each other. If their marriage proved valid, they would have gratitude and passion. It would not be a bad beginning.
Xander came and stripped off his clothes, and her sense of gratitude faded a little. She really did like him naked.
Without a word, he took her wrapper and helped her into the bath. In the light he examined her bruised jaw and swollen lip. He took over and touched her everywhere, washing her hair, reclaiming her from Bread Street and March with hands hotter than the bath itself.
“Is this gratitude?” she asked.
He looked up then, his eyes alive with silver fire. His mouth closed over one breast, and she felt his desire sink down in and spread through her.
She tugged his head up. “No, pay attention here. What is this?”
“Gratitude is the least of it.”
“I should be the grateful one. You saved my life.”
“At least twice by my count.”
“You should be knighted.”
“An overrated experience. Our prince’s stays creak, and he’s a mite heavy-handed with the scent and the sword, and not entirely sober. A man could lose an ear. Besides, I think I will go back to being plain Xander Jones.” He returned his attention to her breast.
Cleo stopped him again by tugging gently on his hair. “I have a better idea. Where’s my knife?”
His eyes grew wary. “On the dresser.”
Cleo stepped from the bath and dripped her way over to his chest of drawers. She almost faltered, feeling his gaze on her, but she found her knife next to the jar of leeches and a piece of straw. The straw distracted her. “What’s this?”
“Your gifts to me. Your gifts are hard to come by for a mere husband.”
“Oh dear. We really should release those leeches.”
“Not here, I trust.”
She turned back to him, knife in hand. She took his breath away, rising from her bath in shining-limbed splendor. “You are aptly named, Cleopatra, never doubt.”
She only smiled at that. “Kneel.”
He stepped from the bath, and she spread a thick towel on the floor, where he knelt before her, not such a bad position. He could lean forward and bury his face in her secret curls. “This is what you wanted all along. I remember you said I should kneel and beg you for money.” He slid his arms around her and pressed his face into her curls.
After a moment she said, “You are interfering with the ceremony.” Her fingers rested on his head, threading lightly through the damp black strands. “Tell me the words.”
He pulled back. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I rather like being Lady Jones.”
“Then Lady Jones you shall be.”
The words were hard to come by. Had he ever knelt before that assembly of shocked sycophants to receive the prince’s whimsical favor? To kneel before his wife, to receive her favor was a vastly different experience. He would have to make something up, something that fit them.
“I swear by mouth and hand and heart and blade to serve you always, lady,” he managed.
“That can’t be right; are you sure?” She was dragging the knife edge lightly across his shoulder. She smelled of warm soap and herself, and her body trembled a little under his touch.
“I have a better oath to swear by.”
“Do you?” Her voice was languid and dreamy.
He stood and scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. The knife fell from her lax hand and slid to the carpet. He looked down on her, the princess he’d stolen from under the nose of a particularly nasty dragon. “I swear to love you forever.”
She smiled up at him and opened her arms. “Oh, I like that oath. Much better.”
Later from the depths of his bed, Xander spoke of his plan and the failed rescue of his brother.
“I thought I married you for your money, and that I could resist you and set you free.” It was a confession that had to be made.
“Thank goodness I proposed to you. What made you get it right?”
Xander laughed and with a swift move pinned her under him again. “March. My whole plan was that March would act in the courts to dissolve our marriage, but every move he made to take you from me made me hold on tighter.”
Again they mingled in love, a long, slow joining that left their limbs loose and entwined. But Cleo knew he needed to talk about the loss he had suffered as well as the joy he had gained. “Tell me about him,” she urged.
“He’s sixteen, just.”
“How did he disappear?”
“I was playing the hero.”
She heard the self-condemnation in his tone. “Saving the regent?”
He seemed to withdraw a little. “There was a mob around that yellow carriage of his, and the guards couldn’t come to order. A wild fellow was waving a pistol. I saw the gun, and I . . .” He shuddered, and Cleo pressed her whole person against him.
“I shoved Kit in a doorway and told him to stay, but I think we were followed. We’d been to a boxing exhibition at the Fives Court in a huge crowd. Someone, maybe Harris, was waiting for the chance to take him.”
“Who is Kit’s father?”
“Daventry. He died at Assaye under Wellesley in India two months before Kit was born.”
“Daventry? Wenlocke’s son? His people did not help in the search?” She propped herself up on an elbow to look at him.
He was frowning. “You know, I think they may have delayed it. Will was still in France. There was a debate, in the Lords no less, about the prince’s proposed knighting of a baseborn man. My father was opposed, as was Wenlocke. Until it was settled, I couldn’t get anyone to act.”
“What ended the debate?”
“The prince wanted his way, and his secretary, Clarke, had a line from Shakespeare that settled it.” His rough, warm hand found her knee.
“Maybe you were meant to be a hero,” she said on a little intake of breath. She believed it, but his hand was distracting, and she would have to make the point again later.
“Not a saint?” He shifted to kiss her throat.
She shook her head, letting quiet laughter fill her. “A saint would not slide his hand up his lady’s thigh in that particularly provoking way.”
It was dawn when they again spoke of Kit. “I did not expect him to grow so tall. Three years.”
Cleo could feel the unspoken question eating at her husband. “It isn’t that he’s grown tall, but that he’s not who he was.” She laid her hand on Xander’s heart and tried to explain. “You have been searching for a young boy. Kit is someone else. He doesn’t believe that you want the person he’s become.”
Xander’s person stilled under her hand. She thought he did not breathe, but neither did he shrink from the truth. “Who is he then?”
Cleo smiled at the note of uncertainty in his voice even as his mind worked at the puzzle of Kit’s hanging back at the edge of his old life. That hesitation was the very thing that her fearless husband could not understand. He who could lean into a knife, or hurl himself at an attacker, or throw himself down a dark stairwell would not understand the self-doubt that held Kit back. With this she could help him. “Kit seems to have gathered a family about him. How many children were there do you think? It was hard to count shadows.”
“Eight at least.”
“You know what that means, don’t you?” She saw it, even if he did not.
Xander couldn’t answer, could only submit to the lazy stroking of her hand across his chest.
“He’s like you. He looks out for those weaker and smaller than himself. He protects them. He’s a knight of those streets.”
Her words provoked a rueful laugh. “Which he’s become because apparently he thinks it’s more dangerous to live in a fine house off Berkeley Square than to be homeless and nameless on Bread Street.”
“Perhaps it is. You and Will must find out why and who your enemy is, and truly bring your lost brother home.”
Chapter Twenty-four
T
HE four investigators of the London Consistory Court faced a small assemblage of persons late on a dark November day. Though they wore neither robes nor wigs for the occasion, they sat on a dais befitting their position as men of probity and rank. The weather out was vile, a gale threatened, and their sober faces expressed a certain impatience to resolve the matter before them by teatime.
HE four investigators of the London Consistory Court faced a small assemblage of persons late on a dark November day. Though they wore neither robes nor wigs for the occasion, they sat on a dais befitting their position as men of probity and rank. The weather out was vile, a gale threatened, and their sober faces expressed a certain impatience to resolve the matter before them by teatime.
“Are all parties present?” Dr. Valentine, one of the two lay members of the court, surveyed the meager party.
Dr. Stephen Lushington, King’s Counselor, rose from his seat opposite Cleo and Xander’s side of the room.
“I regret, Dr. Valentine, that Mr. Archibald March, Miss Spencer’s chief trustee, has gone abroad.”
Norwood was instantly on his feet. “In view of Mr. March’s absence, I believe we can move quickly to clear up any question of the validity of the marriage of Sir Alexander Jones and Cleopatra Spencer.”
Lushington was plainly embarrassed. “Dr. Valentine, Mr. March is a man whose unassailable character and reputation are of such long standing in London that I encourage you not to act in haste. We have reports of serious conjugal irregularities in this case.”
“Spies’ reports,” said Norwood. “March has left London under a cloud of suspicion regarding his involvement in the recent abduction of Lady Jones and in a number of deaths, including the death of the Right Honorable Lord Woford, four years ago, and the more recent deaths of Dick Cullen, an employee of Truman’s Brewery, and Mrs. Lottie Greenslade, a resident of Number Forty Bread Street.
“In light of Lady Jones’s present circumstances as a wife and under the terms of the original trust, I request that all funds bequeathed to her by her father must revert to Sir and Lady Jones for their management, and I further file a motion to amend the initial trust document, giving Lady Jones and her lawful husband, Sir Alexander Jones, joint guardianship of the minor, Charles Spencer.”
Everyone spoke at once. Charlie cheered. Lushington began to sputter in protest. One of the other investigators began to ask questions. Finally, the chief investigator brought his gavel down with a bang.
“Mr. Norwood, from the beginning there has been cause to doubt this marriage. What do you now offer in support of its validity?”
“Why, Lady Jones is with child.”
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