Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3) (5 page)

“Carter,” she mumbled, “I’m awfully sorry. Please could you do up these last hooks on the dress?”

“I… um…” Carter did not move from the door for a while, as she waited tautly by the window. And then, as if making a great decision, in giant steps he strode to stand behind her and wordlessly started to hook the buttons together.

He was extremely slow, the rhythm of his fingers pulling the button through the eye of the hook creating a hypnotic beat that quelled the quiet fear that had risen in her heart. Melissa lifted her head sharply, and, startled, opened her eyes wide, as a strong, warm finger traced her back where the last hook would lie. In the light reflection of the window, a man, much taller than Carter, stared down at the nape of her neck, his hands slightly lifted up from his side.

Melissa shivered, a true quiver of tingling awareness. The man’s eyes blazed warmth, even in the reflection of the window. She whirled away and in one deft movement, brought her glasses to her nose.

The earl stood just a pace front of her. His expression icily forbidding, as if the man that she had seen blurred in the window had been his fiery twin.

She had known it was him, from the moment his finger had touched her skin. Pushing her silver frames more firmly onto her face and straightening her back, she took one step back, and then another, until her back pressed against the window sill, and there was nowhere else she could go.

“I would ask you not to try and seduce my butler again in order to escape.” The earl’s voice contained tones of gravel, but his face remained blank. “He may fall for it, but I will not.”

“I wasn’t trying to seduce him.” Melissa clasped her hands together.
Not again!
She lifted her chin. “You have not thought to provide me with a maid, and the dresses you brought me need two people to put them on!”

It fell on deaf ears. The earl had already turned and walked straight to the door, shutting it with a bang.

Melissa stumbled towards the bedroom chair. The man was an
obstinate fool
. Obstinate to continue to think that she had anything to do with the Viper. A fool to even believe that she was capable of
being
the Viper.

She shivered again and drew a wrap around the green dress. He was right, however. She needed to find some way to escape his house. For the first time since enduring the advances of the coal delivery man so long ago she was frighteningly aware that she had finally met a man whose touch she didn’t seem to mind at all.

And… and… if he could make her tingle all over with just one touch of his fingers, what else could he make her do against her will? The hard won will that she had avowed as her own, not twenty minutes before?

CHAPTER 5

Hades reined in his stallion and stopped the horse just inside Bayswater Lane. Leaping lithely off his horse, he threw the reins around a fence post and walked briskly along the road until he arrived at a terraced house that looked just like the rest of the others along the street. Lace hung in the window, and large numbers on the door proclaimed it to be number 31. Pulling Melissa’s note out of his pocket Hades glanced down at the small neat handwriting that marked the address on the outside of the folded parchment. It definitely said 31 Bayswater Lane.

Striding to the door, Hades lifted the knocker and slammed it down. No one answered.
What a surprise.
The assistants had known that the Viper had been captured and vanished to save their own skins, just as Granwich had said they would. He peered in at the window, but the front room was dark.

Shaking his head, Hades pushed the note back into his pocket and walked back to his horse. He’d try round the back and then leave. And then he would interview Melissa again, in the library. Truly find out what she knew and who the hell she
was
. He stopped mid-step, a foreboding unease lurking low in his chest. It all fitted surely? That his ‘Diana’ was in fact Melissa Sumner, the daughter of the infamous woman who had married Edgar Stanton and then with her new husband, had tried to murder Lord James Stanton. Of course Melissa was the Viper.
Spawn of spawn
and all that. Uneasily, Hades untied his horse from the post.
There was nothing devilish about her though.

The long, coughing and spluttering line of people started as soon as he rounded the corner into the small lane behind the terraced house. Leaving his horse in the road, and putting his handkerchief to his face, he edged to the front of the queue where a red-faced woman doled out medicines and cures whilst consulting a book written in the tiniest of hands. Henry pressed his handkerchief closer to his face.
Bloody hell, an apothecary business?

The stout woman stopped consulting the book as Hades’ shadow darkened the pages and she glared at him with all the might of a fishwife. “Get to the back of the line, sir. We don’t care whether you have money or not, you wait with the rest of them.”

He didn’t have time to protest before she began to shout, waving the book in the air. “Mr. Hobbs, get this man to go to the back of the queue. I can’t deal with him and decipher Melissa’s handwriting, it’s like reading beetle tracks.”

A round gentleman, also sporting a quite red face, jovially waddled to his side as Hades stepped back. “She’s a battle-axe my wife, but she’s doing a splendid job,” he said conspiratorially. “Melissa’s disappeared and we’ve no idea where she’s gone.”

Hades nodded, slowly withdrawing Melissa’s note from his pocket.

Silently the man read the note and looked at Hades. “Where is she?” Hades winced as Mr. Hobbs’ face turned a deep worrying maroon. “What have you done with our Melissa, you bastard?”

“I have done nothing with her. She has decided to take a holiday. She merely asked me to give this message to you.”

Mr. Hobbs clenched his fist, and with a milling arm, let fly at Hades. With lightning vigor, Hades shot out his hand and grabbed the man’s smaller fist in his own. He sighed and waited until the man was unbalanced and let go. Mr. Hobbs dropped to the ground, nursing his crushed fist.

“Here, Mr. Hobbs, you don’t want to be an enemy of Earl Harding!”

Hades groaned inwardly. It was just his luck that a few young men that he knew vaguely by sight from the ton balls would be in this mixed bag of people. They fancied themselves high up on the Corinthian stakes and sported neckties that couldn’t even make their necks turn easily. He nodded to them quickly and swung back upon his horse,
God
he couldn’t bloody function with all the coughing going on around him.

He fell back in his saddle as he trotted through the gates to Hyde Park and reined his horse into a slow walk. If Melissa was the Viper she would be killing people with her medicine instead of curing them.

And that was just it. Uncomfortably Hades shifted in the saddle. Just that morning he’d received the disturbing news that the man who had passed him the information about the Viper meeting in St. Giles had just been fished out of the Thames with the same look of agony on his face as the rest.

But Melissa hadn’t been able to send any messages, until the first one to the Hobbs, and even that had been delivered after Hades had received the news of the murdered informant. Surely she was still the Viper?

There was no other explanation for his magnetic need to keep an eye on her.

His stallion jerked and sidled sideways. Hades looked down at his reins where his hands showed white across the knuckles. He needed to calm down. Perhaps he should buy some more books for his study? He shook his head and loosened his hands on the reins. The prospect of a new find in the Temple of Muses bookshop did not excite him as much as it normally did. Jerking sharply at the reins, Hades set the stallion off in a gallop across the parkland.

He avoided the shouts of greeting that followed him as he sailed across the bridle paths. A group of enterprising mothers attempted to block his path with their ancient landau, but he swiftly changed direction, pushing the horse faster and faster. They never seemed realize that he didn't want anything to do with their kind.

A tantalizing expanse of white skin shimmered across his memory.
Gods
, his fingers had ached to touch her back as he had done up the buttons and hooks, all the way to the neck. The gown had obviously been that for a young chaste girl fifty years ago, but what Melissa didn’t realize was that it just screamed to be taken off, to reveal more of the expanse of cream within.

Hades bit down on his tongue and leaned into the horse’s neck. She was only the second woman to have got passed his defenses, and made him feel emotions not on his own terms. And he was damned if he was going to let it happen again.

CHAPTER 6

Melissa smoothed her hands down the green dress and examined her reflection in the mirror. It revealed a severely-dressed young lady with an earnest look covered by silver spectacles. Grimacing, she pulled up her skirts and shuffled to the door. He really could not accuse her of seducing him now.

Stepping lightly down the stairs, she chose the first door on the right, the study.  It was gloomy and smelled of old books, male cologne and, Melissa sniffed appreciatively, coffee. The chair where the earl had sat was still in the same position, a half-opened book on a table next to the worn leather chair. To her relief, the uncomfortable library chair that she had been made to sit on was drawn back into the corner of the room.

Blinking in the semi-darkness, she walked to the table and traced a finger against the leather bound edge of the book. ‘
Letters to Atticus’
by Marcus Tullius Cicero did not sound like a riveting read, but the book was still well thumbed.

Shivering a little in the coolness of the room, Melissa picked up some iron tongs that lay by the chair and poked the fire behind her to create a bigger blaze. As the flames danced up, an orange glow revealed the walls of the study, stacked high with books.

In wonder she moved amongst the shelves, tracing her fingers down the spines of the books, plain and ornate, short and tall. Some she recognized fleetingly from her father’s library from when he was alive. Most of the books, though, were unfamiliar to her, written in Greek, Latin, Spanish and even Mandarin. All seemed dedicated to war, ancient and modern, and contained references to strategy and military.

One thin, tall dusty bookshelf stood apart from the rest dedicated only to plants and animals, as if they were little used. Gasping in delight, Melissa closed her eyes and selected a book at random. Pushing the book behind her back so that she wouldn’t see what it was until she was settled, she paused uncertainly in front of the fire. There was only one chair in the room that was comfortable, and that was the earl’s. She certainly didn’t want to sit on the library chair again. With a grimace, Melissa put her book down on the table, and with a large heave, pulled the comfortable chair closer to the fire.

The chair welcomed her to its folds with a warm embrace. She drew her knees up and tucked them into the soft cushioned depths. Resting her head against the tall leather back of the seat, Melissa could sense the faint smell of the earl’s cologne. It was not unpleasant. What was she thinking—
it was glorious.
She wriggled her toes; it was no wonder that the earl was so notorious in his popularity with the females of the ton. She could detect traces of musk, vanilla and lavender, all potent ingredients. Shaking her head, she picked up the book she had chosen and with both hands pulled it open and began to read. 

It was fascinating, a treatise on naval medicine covering topics such as the use of bran in poultices and liquids that could be used to dull pain. It wasn’t quite what Melissa had expected when she had drawn the book out, but nevertheless, she was pleased to have found it. Given her current occupation, it seemed very apt.

A cough at the door startled her from reading about the surprisingly interesting different ways in which to saw men’s legs off. Carter loomed in the doorway, staggering under a tray of coffee, sandwiches and biscuits.

“I thought you might like something to eat, miss?” Carter wobbled in, wielding his tray like a shield.

“Thank you, Carter,” Melissa said gratefully. Her stomach rumbled and the smell of coffee was alluring. She smiled at Carter and stopped suddenly. She couldn’t have the earl accusing her of seducing Carter again.

Jerkily, Carter put down the tray on the oval table, moving the two books slightly so that he could lay out the coffee pot. He stood, and paused as if wishing to say something. Melissa waited. But he turned and left as suddenly as he had arrived.

It would have been nice to have some company. But at least it meant she had all the sandwiches to herself. As she picked up the last ham roll, she took a large bite and leaned back in the chair. Closing her eyes, she savored the smell of cologne and the taste of the sandwich.

Too late she opened her eyes. Carter had put down two coffee cups. The amount of sandwiches— of which she had eaten all— was enormous. The smell of cologne was… stronger than faint.

She turned her head slowly, wishing that she wasn’t wearing her spectacles—she didn’t really want to see. A muscular pair of legs stood directly in her eye line. A wide torso and a magnificent head covered in rich brown hair crowned the rest.

“You are in my chair.” The earl raised his eyebrows at her and with a nod of his head indicated the library chair. “That is your chair.”

Melissa gazed up at him, biting back the customary
oh dear
that threatened to fall out of her mouth. He was treating her like Goldilocks and she couldn’t complain about his bear like behavior. She
had
eaten all the sandwiches after all.

“There is some coffee left.” She took a deep breath and tucked her legs up beneath her. “And some biscuits.”

“Did you not hear what I said? You are in my chair!”

Melissa lifted her chin and stared at him. She had been told that she could go to his study, but surely he hadn’t meant that she was to skulk around in it for hours on end without sitting down? “Why don’t you sit on the uncomfortable chair?” she said without moving. “I’ve already experienced it, and it was not a delightful experience. This is your house, you chose the furniture, make that one your chair!” She held her breath, surprised at her own bravado as the earl glared at her.