A Scoundrel by Moonlight (27 page)

He smiled and extended one hand. “Let’s not part on a quarrel, my darling.”

After a hesitation that made his heart falter, she curled her fingers around his. That touch made him feel that he stood where he was meant to be. Such power she had.

“Don’t ask again, please,” she said in a low voice. Her eyes were dark with misery.

He drew her unresisting into his arms until she rested on his chest. “Not tonight, at least.”

Nell closed her bedroom door and slumped against it in utter exhaustion. She felt like she’d been through a battle. Yet her fight with James had only started. He wouldn’t give up this lunatic idea to marry her. Even as he’d given her a reprieve, she’d read his intractable expression.

She shut her eyes and prayed for strength to deny him, however much she yearned to become his wife. If she hadn’t lived at Alloway Chase and seen his dedication to
the political life, perhaps she’d relent. If she hadn’t known his mother and heard about his beloved father’s shattered dreams, perhaps she’d relent. But Nell knew that if she cost James everything he’d worked for, he might forgive her, but she’d never forgive herself.

She bit back a sob. How odd to think that today, she’d been so set on his destruction, yet now for his sake, she sacrificed her dearest hopes.

“Miss Trim, are you all right?”

Shocked, Nell opened her eyes and peered through the shadows. The fire was lit and a candle flickered on the nightstand. In a dark corner, Lady Hillbrook was curled up on a chair.

“Your ladyship…” Nell stammered, sick with embarrassment. After what she and James had done in the library, she could imagine what she looked like.

“I’m sorry for startling you.” Sidonie Merrick stood and approached. “Pen wanted to check on you. I talked her into letting me wait instead. She needs her rest.”

“You’re both too considerate,” Nell said, cheeks aflame. She retreated against the door, although there was nowhere to hide, and her tumbled hair and disheveled clothing must betray her.

“Lord Leath didn’t hurt you?” Lady Hillbrook asked in consternation.

Nell shook her head. “No. I was mistaken, it turned out. He’s innocent of wrongdoing. His uncle used his name when he seduced my half-sister.”

It seemed bizarre to boil the whole tempestuous drama down to three short sentences. Although of course so much remained in the balance. How her affair with James proceeded. Greengrass’s blackmail. James’s political future.

“I’m not surprised. Neville Fairbrother was a vile
creature.” She gestured toward a side table. “Would you like some brandy? You look… shaken.”

Nell flinched. She knew she looked more than shaken. Still, it was easier to cooperate than resist. She collapsed onto a chair. After all that ardor and emotion downstairs, her legs felt rubbery.

“Thank you,” she whispered as the lovely brunette pressed a glass into her hand. She sipped, coughing on the taste.

“Drink it all.” Lady Hillbrook placed a slender hand on Nell’s shoulder. “I know I’m a stranger, but I understand something of your feelings. Jonas and I traveled a rocky road to happiness too.”

“Your ladyship…” A hundred lies claiming the slightest acquaintance with James rose, but as she met Lady Hillbrook’s perceptive gaze, they died unspoken.

“You don’t have to say anything, Miss Trim,” she said softly. “But if you’d like someone to talk to, I promise that I won’t leap to judge you by the world’s narrow standards.”

“You… you don’t know what I’ve done,” she muttered, avoiding the other woman’s scrutiny.

Lady Hillbrook’s soft laugh as she took the glass surprised Nell. “We all do silly things when we’re in love, Miss Trim.”

When she’d discovered Lady Hillbrook waiting, Nell thought she couldn’t feel more mortified. Now having her deepest heart put on view made her want to sink into the floor. Tears flooded her eyes. “Please…”

“We knew the minute we saw your horse that you meant something special to Lord Leath.”

Despite everything, Nell choked on a laugh. “My horse? That’s mad.”

“Perhaps. Were we wrong?”

“His lordship…” What could she say? His lordship was reckless with his future? His lordship made her sigh with helpless love? His lordship would break her heart before he was done? Any impulse to amusement, however bleak, died.

Squeezing her shoulder, Lady Hillbrook bent to kiss her cheek. “You want to be alone. And you think I’m prying.” The sincerity in her voice appeased Nell’s stirring resentment. “I know how it feels to believe that you bear the world’s troubles all alone.”

“There’s… there’s nothing to be done,” Nell said, before realizing how that broken little admission confirmed Lady Hillbrook’s suspicions.

“There’s always something to be done.”

“Not in this case,” Nell muttered, digging her hands into her skirts.

Lady Hillbrook’s smile was compassionate. “Be brave and follow your heart, Miss Trim.”

“My heart is no reliable guide,” Nell forced out, desperately wishing the woman would go. Her pride became more threadbare by the minute.

“Sometimes it’s the only guide that matters.” Lady Hillbrook stepped away. “But of course, you wish me to the devil.”

Nell summoned a smile. She hoped it looked more genuine than it felt. “I wouldn’t be so rude.”

Lady Hillbrook laughed softly. “You know, Miss Trim, you’ll do. You really will. And don’t let anyone tell you differently.”

Nell frowned, not sure whether this was a compliment or not. “You’re…”

“Not making any sense, I can see. I shouldn’t torment you. I just wanted to tell you that you’re not alone, although I imagine you feel like it in this house full of strangers.”

“That was kind,” she said.

Lady Hillbrook sent her a shrewd glance. “It would be kinder to leave you in peace.”

“Thank you,” Nell said in relief. When she’d come upstairs, she’d dreaded that her brazen antics in the library might arouse disdain and disgust. This undeserved offer of friendship was harder to accept.

Lady Hillbrook turned toward the door. “Good night, Miss Trim.”

“Good night, your ladyship,” she whispered, before Lady Hillbrook granted her the privacy for a good, long cry.

I
t’s time we found a solution to the Greengrass problem.” Hillbrook settled into a chair in Sedgemoor’s library and brought the delicate coffee cup to his lips. “He’s clearly up to his old tricks.”

Sedgemoor had called this meeting of Leath, Hillbrook, and Harmsworth after breakfast. Leath understood Eleanor’s pique at being excluded. But she’d done enough, however misguided, in this quest to end his dead uncle’s baleful influence. The task was men’s business now, not least because the others had experience with that dangerous thug Hector Greengrass.

He’d cut off his hands before he put Eleanor in danger.

How he’d hated letting her go last night, especially when they’d only just found each other again. But he retained enough discretion to know that he couldn’t share her bed. Not without shaming her.

“I had men scouring the kingdom for the bugger after that swine Fairbrother shot himself…” Sedgemoor cast Leath an apologetic glance from his seat near the hearth. “Sorry,
old man. I know he was your uncle, but he was rotten to the core.”

“Don’t apologize for insulting the blackguard,” Leath said, standing near the window. The view outside was wet and gray and uniformly gloomy. “I wish he’d been drowned at birth.”

“It’s easy enough to disappear under a different name.” Harmsworth lounged against the mantel, looking like an illustration from a fashion periodical. His surprisingly disreputable-looking hound lay a few feet away. Leath had always dismissed the baronet as Sedgemoor’s brainless satellite. But noting the firm jaw and intelligent eyes, now he wasn’t so sure. “Greengrass took a leaf from his master’s book. I gather your uncle stole your name to despoil virgins up and down the country.”

“Apparently,” Leath said drily.

“And among these women was Miss Trim’s sister,” Sedgemoor added. “Damned bad business, that.”

“Half-sister. Which is why Miss Trim used her real name at Alloway Chase.”

“That’s one enterprising female.”

“She has no shortage of courage.” Leath kept his tone noncommittal, although he suspected that all these men—and their wives—guessed that he and Miss Trim were more than former enemies, now reluctant allies. The fact that he and Eleanor had been left alone last night spoke volumes for what these sophisticated, clever people assumed about his relations with his housemaid.

He wondered what they’d say if they knew he’d proposed to that housemaid. And that the housemaid had had the temerity to say no.

“Greengrass is skulking somewhere in Berkshire. At least the address where I’m to take the money is in Maidenhead. The first letter came from Newbury.”

The mail at Alloway Chase had included a letter from Greengrass responding to Leath’s agreement to buy the diary. The ruffian had changed his point of contact. Clearly he was cunning and wary. He needed to be to escape justice so long.

As Hillbrook leaned back in his chair, a sardonic smile creased his scarred face. “I credit the fellow’s sense of humor in choosing his location.”

“None of this is a matter for jest, Jonas,” Sedgemoor growled. “You saw those letters. Neville Fairbrother used those women and abandoned them to starvation and disgrace. I wish I’d shot the cur myself instead of leaving him to take the easy way out.”

“I only got the blackmail demand a week ago,” Leath said. “My agents have tried to locate him, with the hope that the law could take him unawares. They haven’t had any luck, despite setting up a watch on the Newbury inn.”

“One wonders what Greengrass has been living on since he fled Little Derrick,” Harmsworth said thoughtfully. “That was over a year ago. It’s odd that he’s waited so long to squeeze you over the diary.”

Hillbrook agreed. “He wouldn’t hesitate before tightening the screws on a victim.”

“Perhaps after Lord Neville’s fall, he was nervous about tangling with the aristocracy,” Sedgemoor suggested.

Harmsworth frowned. “I can’t see Greengrass nervous at the Last Judgment. After failing so ignominiously in Little Derrick, he’d be set on causing mayhem.”

“He and Fairbrother went damned close to finishing you and Genevieve.” Anger resonated in Sedgemoor’s usually calm voice. “We all have scores to settle, not just Leath.”

“We know where he wants to collect the money,” Leath said. “He must be holed up near there. Especially as he’s demanded payment within the week.”

“Leath, you don’t mean to do what the bugger wants?” Harmsworth asked.

He bared his teeth at the man he’d once considered his enemy. “No. I mean to get that bloody diary and destroy it—and in the process destroy Greengrass, too.”

“Bravo,” Hillbrook said drily. “I’m in the mood for a jaunt into the Home Counties.”

“In this frigid weather, anything south of here sounds good,” Sedgemoor said.

“Hear, hear.” Harmsworth raised his cup in an ironic toast.

Leath frowned at this circle of influential men. “I don’t understand.”

“Very simple, my dear Leath,” Sedgemoor said with that superior air that had always irritated him, particularly over the last year when relations between the Fairbrothers and the Rothermeres had been colder than today’s temperature.

Strangely Leath wasn’t as irritated as he used to be. Love must have softened his heart. Or his head.

“Yes, very simple,” Hillbrook repeated. Another superior bugger. Any room Jonas Merrick entered always seemed too small for his dominant presence. But again, Leath’s usual urge to punch that ruined face was absent. “We all owe Greengrass a reckoning and if we can achieve that while getting you out of a fix, we’re delighted to assist.”

Leath stared across to the fire. “I can handle this, although I appreciate your support.”

Sedgemoor laughed and to his surprise, rose to clap him on the shoulder as if they were friends rather than men forced into superficial politeness by a runaway wedding. “Don’t be so damned prickly. Why should you have all the fun?”

Shocked, oddly moved, Leath glanced around the room. The others regarded him steadily, without hostility or equivocation.

“You still should have damn well warned me before making my uncle’s crimes public,” he said, although the words lacked the rage that had prompted him to work against Sedgemoor and his cohorts.

Sedgemoor extended his hand. “Let bygones be bygones.”

Six months ago, if anyone had said that he’d accept Camden Rothermere’s friendship, he’d have laughed. Six months ago, he and the duke had come to blows over Sophie’s elopement.

Yet now, he found himself smiling and taking Sedgemoor’s hand. “A new beginning, Your Grace.”

Gripping his hand with impressive strength, Sedgemoor surveyed him down that long ducal nose. “Well said.”

Leath cleared his throat as Sedgemoor released him. All his life he’d been in essence a lone wolf. Now it seemed he had a woman he loved. And an offer of friendship. A series of friendships, he realized, noticing that Hillbrook and Harmsworth observed him with an approval he couldn’t imagine he deserved.

“So that’s set.” Hillbrook rose and offered his hand too. In a daze, Leath accepted it. He hardly knew this man. For most of Jonas Merrick’s life, his supposed bastardy had excluded him from society. “We’re off to Berkshire to crush an adder.”

Harmsworth rose to shake Leath’s hand too. He smiled with the easy charm that Leath had formerly dismissed as weakness. “Welcome to the gang. We’ll do the blood brother ceremony before lunch.”

“We’ll be on our way to Berkshire before then,” Sedgemoor said.

Leath found himself laughing. “I’m embarrassingly eager to shout, ‘All for one and one for all.’ ”

“Now to tell our wives that we’re adventuring without them,” Hillbrook said wryly. “I’d rather face Greengrass.”

Sedgemoor smiled. “Pen will welcome some company.”

“I’m sure Sidonie will stay—once I’ve convinced her that I can survive without her pistol guarding my back.”

“Genevieve is giving a lecture to the Royal Society next week. She’ll want to return to London.” Harmsworth had married a famous bluestocking. The thought of such a mismatch had given Leath many a nasty laugh in the last year. Now he wondered if the Harmsworth marriage was the disaster he’d predicted.

“She can travel with us,” Sedgemoor said.

“We’ll get all the way to Mayfair before we convince her that we can succeed without her pistol too,” Harmsworth said with a mocking melancholy that didn’t hide his fondness for his wife.

“She has her own score to settle with the devil,” Hillbrook said on a sober note. “You can’t blame her for wanting to see the end.”

“I can’t blame her,” Harmsworth said. “But I’ll be damned before I let her get within ten feet of that rabid cur.”

“Sedgemoor, would I push this new amity if I asked you to shelter Miss Trim until everything’s cleared up?” Once, the idea of asking a favor from the arrogant duke would have stuck in Leath’s craw.

“Of course. Pen will like that.”

“Thank you.” Eleanor wouldn’t appreciate being left behind. If he knew his Miss Trim, she’d want to be in at this drama’s climax.