Confessions of a Little Black Gown (5 page)

“He’s dangerous,” he argued instead. “Done too many errands for you, Pymm. Don’t think I don’t know about Madrid. Or what he did in Marseilles.” Temple shook his head. “A man can take only so much before he loses his soul.”

“He’s the best man for the job,” Pymm asserted.

This stopped Temple cold. “You don’t mean you intend him to—”

Pymm’s heels dug to a halt. “Dashwell must be stopped,” he said in the same ruthless, determined way a terrier might eye a rat. “He knows too much.”

Temple’s heart hammered. “You don’t mean…”

“I won’t have Dashwell sailing away from these shores a free man,” Pymm said stubbornly. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. Justice will be served. Mark my words. But we have to catch him first, and if anyone can do it and leave Hollindrake’s name unsullied, it’s Larken. Like I said, he’s the best man for the job.”

“The best man? Why he’s spent the last six months roaming about Town at all hours. Can’t sleep for the nightmares his work has left on his conscience, and now you’re sending him into a house party? Demmit, man! Think of what you are doing! What if he harms one of the guests? You’ve let a caged tiger loose in a house full of lambs.”

Pymm waved his hand dismissively. “Lambs who got the most wanted man in England out of Marshalsea Prison. If you are so worried for their welfare, go along with Larken. But keep your distance from the house, mind you.”

“I plan on it,” Temple told him.

“Good. I told Larken you’d be near to take his reports.”

Temple stumbled for a second, and then caught up with him. “You know this could ruin him. You’ve sent him out one too many times with promises that you’ll restore his father’s honor, offering him posts with the diplomatic corps. When he discovers you’ve used his intractable sense of duty for your own ruthless means, and cannot, or will not help him, he may just turn on you.”

Hollindrake House, Sussex
Four nights later

I should have stayed in London
, Larken thought as he entered the dining room. Here he’d planned to arrive well ahead of most of the guests and be done with this fool’s errand before the house was filled with people, but he hadn’t anticipated that there would be family in attendance…and so much family.

He glanced up to find the Duchess of Hollindrake smiling at him like a cat eyeing a bowl of cream.

Demmit! Didn’t the woman take a break from her matchmaking schemes to eat her dinner?

When she patted the chair next to hers, he had his answer.
Obviously not.

Blast Temple to hell. The man had never mentioned anything about Ryder coming to this party to seek a wife.

A wife?! Oh, yes, he’d have quite the report for Pymm when he got back. That is, after he got done shoving Temple into the path of an oncoming mail coach. Accidentally, of course.

“Mr. Ryder,” the duchess called out, “there you are, just in time to meet everyone.” She moved forward, weaving her way through guests and chairs, and caught him by the elbow, latching on with a determined air and glancing up at him, her brows drawn in a quizzical arch. “Mr. Ryder, are you well?”

Oh, demmit, she means you, Larken
, he thought, prodding his features into a bland smile for the woman.

“I hope you don’t find our manners too dull,” she was saying. “With just family in attendance, well, it didn’t seem necessary to have a grand, formal meal.”

This was how family dined? Larken glanced at the gleaming white cloth, the array of perfectly polished silver, and the shimmer of wineglasses and thought of his own usually hastily gobbled meals. This was quite the contrast to a tray in his study, or some greasy fare from a motley inn in Portugal, or even the hardtack he oftentimes managed to scavenge and tuck away in his saddlebags when his travels for Pymm took him so far afield that his dinner might cost him his life.

Why, even after his father died, he’d lived with his Aunt Edith, and though she’d been married to an earl, she always adhered to the belief in plain fare.

The duchess continued towing, well, guiding him
to his honored place at the table. “My mother-in-law, Lady Charles Sterling,” she said, introducing him to an elegantly attired matron. “Lady Charles, this is the cousin I was telling you about, Mr. Ryder.”

“Madam, it is a pleasure to meet you,” he said, offering her his worst bow. The lady’s reply was a polite nod and an air of sympathy to her glance.

Meanwhile, they continued down the endless table toward his chair, which was starting to look something more akin to Puritan stocks than a Chippendale masterpiece.

“This, Mr. Ryder, is Lady Geneva Pensford, Hollindrake’s aunt and your cousin as well, I believe,” the duchess said, a bit of a tight note to her voice. “I don’t recall if you have met.”

Larken’s throat caught. For Temple had assured him, no one on the invitation list had ever met Mr. Ryder.

Not that he had to worry for overly long.

“Of course not,” Lady Geneva corrected, having taken one look at his coat and his ragged hair and dismissed him as too far beneath her notice. “Mr. Ryder is a very
distant
cousin.”

Thus dismissed, Larken was able to draw a breath. Thankful that Lady Geneva belonged to that exclusive club of matrons who held breeding and lineage as the primary measure of a person. And even though he was supposedly related, without the Sterling moniker, he certainly did not belong in her frame of reference.

He wondered what she would think of him if she knew who he really was.

Geoffrey, Lord Larken. Son of the disgraced Baron Larken.

Traitor Larken
, as some at White’s liked to refer to his sire, implying that his son was cut from the same cloth.

No, better that Lady Geneva think him just a poor relation, for if she knew the truth, she’d probably demand such a person be cast from the hallowed halls of this house without a second thought.

His attention was returned to the matters at hand, as the duchess introduced him to the last guest. “…Minerva, the Marchioness of Standon,” she said, pausing before a tall, redheaded lady.

Egads, not one of the three dowager Marchionesses of Standon! Every man in London knew to cut a wide berth around the trio of ladies who had each married the various Hollindrake heirs only to see their husbands die before inheriting the prized title of “Duke.” Now, according to Temple, the widows gave Hollindrake no end of trouble over their settlements and the various Hollindrake households they could use, quarreling amongst themselves and with anyone who crossed their path.

The Black Widows, they were called, at the various clubs about Town.

“Lady Standon,” he murmured in greeting, and then deliberately tripped on the leg of a chair to reinforce his charade as the bumbling vicar.

And it worked, for the lady’s lips turned into a forced smile and she immediately began straightening the silverware setting before her.

“Now if only my sister would arrive,” the duchess said, followed by an impatient huff.

Larken’s gaze now locked on the chair next to him. Which happened to be vacant.

Miss Langley.

Now there was a puzzle indeed. For while Temple had described Baron Langley’s daughter as a smart and capable adversary, all he’d seen was a hoydenish piece who couldn’t keep her wretched dog in order, let alone drive a team of horses or aim a fowling piece straight and steady. Temple had to be mad if he truly thought
she
could be behind such a daring escape.

“I fear my cousin Lady Philippa won’t be joining us, for she is staying upstairs with our Aunt Aramintha, who hasn’t been well of late. Our trip from London took a terrible toll on the poor dear, but a few days abed ought to have her back in rare form.”

Larken smiled, wishing he could make the same complaint and flee to the safety of his room. Besides, with everyone at dinner, he could search the house and be done with this madness.

Yet before he could come up with an appropriate case of the grippe or even a claim of sudden, crippling gout, there was a gasp from Lady Geneva. At least he guessed it was from her, given the moral outrage now coloring the lady’s cheeks.

He turned toward the door and the vision he saw standing there, half in the shadows of the hallway and half in the light from the wealth of candles in the dining room, left him wondering if his eyes were deceiving him.

His ears surely were, for he swore he heard the Duchess of Hollindrake mutter something in Russian. And while Russian wasn’t his best language he could still translate her muttered words.

“
Oh, shit.
”

But surely the Duchess wouldn’t say such a thing, no more than her sister would appear in the door the very vision of what he’d always thought one of
them
would look like.

A mistress from the Order of the Black Lily.

For Miss Thalia Langley was no longer the errant, bumbling chit who’d clung to his fingers earlier, but a creature of the night. Alluring and intoxicating to gaze upon, and stirring his senses into a dangerous, rakish mood that hardly resembled the sedate tastes of a country curate.

By God, he swore, she’d drive a hermit out of his cave for such a sight.

A black velvet gown hung from her shoulders, clinging to her every curve. Nor was there, even here in the opposite corner of the dining room, any way to ignore the deep
V
of the dress. Her breasts nearly spilled out, and when she moved forward, he thought they would, if he hadn’t been instantly mesmerized by the sleek undulation of her hips.

It was the sway of the most expensive courtesan, the most practiced seductress. Dobbins’s dockside eloquence aside, he could have been describing Miss Langley to the letter.

“Tally,” the duchess said, bustling past him and cutting off her sister before she got any farther into the room.

“I think you misunderstood my instructions for
dinner,” the duchess said in a whisper loud enough to be heard by all.

Miss Langley sidestepped her sister as if she’d been doing it all her life.

Probably had been, Larken guessed, looking at the twins and seeing not their striking similarities, but the obvious differences between them.

Oh, a mirror would call these two nearly identical—for they both had the same blond hair, the same lithe figures, even moved alike to some degree, but Miss Langley’s eyes were alight with a tantalizing mischief that he doubted ever lit the duchess’s sharp gaze. Nor had she the duchess’s air of authority, the sort of manner that wasn’t simply a consequence of her wedded rank, but was as much a part of her as breathing.

And right now, Her Grace’s authority was being challenged by this scandalous dress. Glancing at the lady in black, Larken would have wagered his best pair of dueling pistols that Thalia Langley had dressed as such deliberately, but for what reason, he couldn’t say. Perhaps the gown was meant only to annoy her sister.

He certainly knew it annoyed him, but for other reasons.

“Where did you get that dress?” the duchess was asking as she followed her sister down the long line of the table.

“It was in my trunk,” she said over her shoulder as she continued toward her chair, her gaze locking with his.

She waved aside the footman who moved forward to help her with her chair, and stood elegantly
posed, smiling at him like a cat. For a few mesmerizing seconds he could only gape at her, until, that is, he realized what she wanted: for him to help her.

Him and alone.

Larken drew a deep, steadying breath, but found himself inhaling a waft of her perfume and it nearly knocked him over.

Lilies of the valley.

Lilies for a lady in black.

As he arose, she shot a glance at him that nearly knocked him out of his shabby boots. The tip of her lips, the arch of her neck, and the hooded whisper of her lashes as they blinked ever so slowly, offered a promise of something no innocent miss of twenty and then some should have any knowledge of.

His blood coursed through his veins in an unholy fashion. Whatever did she expect him to do? Ravish her right there before the first course?

His heart took a double thud.
For now he knew.

The reason for this dress. Her late arrival. Miss Thalia Langley had made him her mission. For whatever reasons, she was after him, onto him, would be on him…

Suddenly his thoughts were of just that…
Miss Langley with that glorious gown in a velvet puddle around her trim ankles and the gel gloriously naked, reaching for him, pulling him to her, and they were lost in a deep, dangerous kiss…

“A-hem,” she coughed, her brows tilting above sparkling blue eyes.

He dared another glance at her and watched as she nodded toward the empty chair beside him.

Her chair.

Oh, yes. He was supposed to be getting that for her. Not standing here lusting after his host’s innocent sister-in-law.

Innocent? Hardly. Enticing? Entirely.