How To Vex A Viscount (7 page)

He had no idea how his kiss melted her inside. Yet the thought of spending time with him, of exploring the mysteries of kissing him, was too delicious an adventure to pass up.

“Very well.” Daisy took his arm and led him toward the splash of light pouring from the open doors to her great-aunt’s home. “Bring me a suitably naughty Roman object of art and I will teach you what I know of kissing. But in the meantime, we should re-join His Lordship’s party. I believe that’s a saraband I hear. And I do so enjoy the dance.”

Daisy decided she’d trip through one more set, then plead exhaustion and head for bed. She was sure she’d be up half the night, rereading Blanche’s entries about the artful use of the lips, teeth and tongue.

“Dangerous principles impose upon our understanding, emasculate our spirits, and spoil our temper.”

—Jeremy Collier, English bishop, theologian and Jacobite

CHAPTER SIX

The reek of smoke and unwashed humanity surged over Sir Alistair Fitzhugh with the force of a Brighton breaker. The chimney at The Unicorn was drafting poorly again, so all the smells of the pub—yeasty ale, oily mutton stew, excessive perfume from the slumming dandies in the corner and the ripe tang of the serving girl who’d just as soon spread her legs for a man as bring him his brew—coalesced into a single stale stink.

Sir Alistair sniffed in appreciation. It was the smell of life, of honest, hard work. Barring the dandies, of course, but the pub needed them to keep the pickpockets from preying on the locals. It reminded him of the smell of his home pub back in Edinburgh.

Or as near to it as he could manage in the spidery sprawl of London town.

His eyes adjusted to the hazy dimness as his gaze swept the room. There in the far corner, a man in a greatcoat with the collar upturned was nursing a pint.

So, he came after all.

Sir Alistair made his way toward the booth and slid in across from the man without a word. A blowsy girl ambled over with a brimming mug in one hand and the other fisted at her waist. Her breasts threatened to spill over her tightly laced bodice. He dropped a coin between them and gave her already hard nipple a tug through the cheap muslin. She giggled and blew him a kiss, promising to return with bread and two bowls of stew. As she turned away with a flip of her skirt, Alistair scented a whiff of her, wet and swollen, beneath the homespun.

“Expect I’ll have a bit of that later,” his companion said.

“I wouldn’t if I were you, Brumley,” Alistair said. “If she isn’t riddled with the French pox already, she will be soon. Better to frequent a reputable brothel, where the madam makes certain the girls and the patrons are both clean. Surely you’ve the coin for it.”

“Not with the pittance my wife deals out,” Lord Brumley said with bitterness. “It was in the marriage contract. Winifred retains control of her considerable dowry by special decree. Always reminding me how tightly her father’s lips are pressed to King Georgie’s arse.”

“Bleedin’ German sod,” Sir Alistair muttered, not meaning Lady Brumley’s father.

“Quite.”

Might as well cinch the matter.
Alistair hefted his mug. “To the king over the water, then.”

Not meaning the German usurper.

Brumley eyed him sullenly, lips drawn tight. This was the moment, and the bastard knew it. Lord Brumley drew a deep breath. Once pledged, he was in.

Alistair had cultivated the unhappy lord for months, enticing Brumley with visions of what his life would be like without the heavy-handed King George. The poor bugger wouldn’t be crawling to his well-connected wife for every scrap. James Stuart placed on his rightful throne would mean rich rewards for those who helped restore him, and a free hand for Lord Brumley into his wife’s deep pockets.

And not a damned thing her father could do about it then.

Brumley lifted his mug. “To the king over the water.” They clinked rims and drank. The sour bite of ale was mother’s milk to Alistair. And the sharp sting was made all the better by the enlistment of Lord Brumley to the glorious cause.

“What did you make of Lord Rutland’s claims this morning?” he asked.

“Roman treasure? A fool’s errand, if you ask me,” Brumley said.

“And yet perhaps not so foolish.” Alistair wrapped his hands around his mug and stared into the dark brew as if he were a Gypsy fortune-teller considering tea leaves. “The antiquities he’s unearthed so far are convincing.”

“So?”

“So, it could add up to a tidy sum if it’s true,” Alistair said. “I’ve done a bit of research this day. A particular friend of mine holds the classical studies chair at Oxford. I happened to catch him in town. He says scholars agree the
stipendium
for a Roman legionnaire’s pay was a silver denarius a day. Multiplied by a three-hundred-day year, the calendar used by the ancients.”

“You expect me to become enthusiastic over three hundred silver coins. What twaddle!”

“At one time, the number of Roman soldiers on our island swelled to fifty-five thousand men,” Sir Alistair said. He raised a brow. “Mayhap you need quill and ink to do the cipher.”

The sudden bob of Brumley’s Adam’s apple showed he was quick enough in his head with figures. “Holy God.”

“Indeed. Think what we could accomplish with millions in Roman silver. If we’d had such a cache of coin in ’15, the Rising might not have failed,” Alistair explained.

The Scottish Uprising in 1715 had met with sharp resistance from the English, who inexplicably preferred George I, the dour German Protestant, as king over His Catholic Majesty James Stuart. Alistair didn’t give two figs about his monarch’s religion, but his Scottish blood called for a Scottish king. And now that the first George was dead and gone, this second one was no more palatable than his predecessor.

“If the Roman treasure is real, it could go a long way toward the Restoration,” Alistair said. “An army has needs, ye ken.”

Ordinarily, he kept his accent at bay through intense concentration, but when he felt passionately about a subject, the brogue resurfaced.

“War is a messy business. An assassin’s dagger has fewer needs,” Brumley suggested.

“Very forward-thinking of you.” The Scot raised his mug in approval. “But that requires a hand close to the king being willing to wield the blade. Your wife’s connections put ye in the royal circle, near enough to do the deed. If ye felt yourself equal to it, we might keep the lion’s share of the Roman hoard
and
earn the gratitude of the true king by dispatching the usurper. But to kill a king, even a false one, is no light matter.”

Alistair leaned forward and skewered Brumley with a searching look. “Is it in ye, man?”

Brumley’s gaze dropped to the worm-eaten table.

“Never ye mind,” Alistair said. Even a weak ally was better than none. “We’ll see if we can search out the truth of Rutland’s Roman coins. If we can manage to slip that treasure out from under the whelp, we’ll have done well enough by James Stuart. Besides, I’ve another idea or two yet.”

And another unhappy English lord besides Brumley whom Alistair judged ripe to entice into his web.

“A man will dispute it with his dying breath, but in his secret heart, he lives to be deceived.”

—the journal of Blanche La Tour

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Your pardon, milord.” Avery, the estate’s aging butler, leaned over the lip of the pit as far as his arthritic back would allow. “Your new . . . partner has arrived. She awaits your pleasure in the parlour.”

Lucian drew his bare forearm over his sweaty brow. He and Percy, the stable lad, had managed to move a good bit of earth since breakfast. Now he’d reached a level where he must lay aside his shovel and rely on a small whisk broom lest they destroy a delicate artefact with the sharp edges of their spades.

“She’s here? I thought she was sending an agent.” He shrugged on his discarded shirt before turning back to the boy who was digging with him. “Keep working with the broom, Percy. If you find something, don’t try to remove it. Just brush the dirt away and I’ll be back directly.”

Lucian climbed the ladder out of the excavation pit and strode toward his father’s manor house. From this distance, the shoddy roof and neglected gardens weren’t as readily apparent. Montford had suffered over the past years, not from lack of care, but lack of funds. There simply wasn’t enough left after meeting their basic needs to put into new roof tiles or roses.

But that would change. Lucian would see to it. Montford would be his someday, and even though he wasn’t English-born, enough English blood flowed in his veins for him to feel pride of place.

He’d been born in Italy, his mother’s homeland. His first memories were of sun-drenched palazzos and the fecund smell of warm Tuscan earth. He’d loved the gentle hills and the round little donkey his grandfather let him ride whenever he could catch the stubborn thing. When his English father came into the earldom and insisted they return to claim his lands, Lucian was excited about traveling to the distant British isle.

But his mother had hated the chunky grey stone of Montford after the warm ochre marble of his grandfather’s graceful villa. She missed the golden quality of light in her homeland. And the damp English weather settled in her delicate Mediterranean chest. Within a short spate of months, Lucian and his father buried her under a leaden English sky.

About the same time his father lost his fortune.

Lucian sometimes liked to imagine that his Italian roots would save them yet. Not only was his grandfather’s miserly stipend keeping them afloat at present, but the ancient Roman relics Lucian had discovered were Montford’s future. The meandering stones poking through the turf at the far end of the meadow had proved to be the capitals of buried upright Doric columns. They were also proof the Italians were here long before his English forebears. His father traced his lineage back only to the Norman conquest. Lucian wondered if he might somehow be connected to Britain by a much longer bloodline on his mother’s side to the Romans who settled Londinium.

And he dreamed of resurrecting the glory of Montford, raising the standard higher than it had ever flown before.

Now, thanks to Blanche, he had access to the funds that would make it all happen.

And other things might happen as well. He’d unearthed a nearly intact statuette of Faunus, the goat-god known as Pan in Greek tradition, that morning. The tip of the figure’s erect penis had broken off, probably a millennium ago, but what remained of the organ was still amusingly outsized. Lucian thought Blanche would enjoy the naughtiness of it and perhaps be willing to exchange even more than kissing lessons for it.

Just the thought of the exotic Blanche set Lucian’s groin aching. For a moment, he wondered if he should take time to change his shirt, but he hated the idea of keeping such an exquisite creature waiting. Besides, she must have known he’d be hard at work and certainly wasn’t expecting to see her this morning. She was supposed to send an agent, after all. Surely she’d forgive a grubby collar and a bit of honest sweat.

The truth was, he could barely restrain himself from breaking into a trot at the thought that she was near.

He hurried to the parlour and found her standing, facing away from the door, gazing out the tall Palladian windows at the overgrown garden. Light-wreathed and ethereal, the golden curls spilling down her back made her seem more angel than temptress. Last night he’d wondered about the colour of her hair beneath her powdered wig, just as he’d puzzled over the colour of her eyes behind the plumed mask. Her scent and the satin feel of her skin were enough to torment his sleep all night. Once she turned to face him, he’d have even more to fuel his dreams.

“Blanche,” he said simply, loving the liquid sound of her name as it poured over his tongue.

“No, milord. Mlle La Tour rarely rises before noon. I, however, am quite rested and ready to start work.” She turned to face him.

“Daisy Drake.”

“Lucian Beaumont,” she returned smoothly. “Now that we have settled the issue of our identities, we can begin. As you can see, I’ve brought the investment you required of Mlle La Tour.”

She waggled her fingers toward a small chest resting on the glass-smooth walnut of the refectory table in the corner. Lucian desperately needed the funds, but he didn’t see how he could accept them by Daisy Drake’s hand.

“Hold a moment.” Now that he thought about it, he chided himself for imagining for an instant that she was Blanche.

Daisy Drake was a good head shorter than the courtesan, and once she spoke, her clipped English bore no resemblance to Blanche’s lilting French. And though the dress she was wearing hugged her form—an exceedingly pleasant arrangement of curves, even though they belonged to Miss Drake instead of Blanche—the gown was the plainest of muslin, a fabric no courtesan would dream of wearing. It had been merely a trick of the light in the parlour that was responsible for his mistake.

That and a longing to see Blanche again that bordered on obsession.

“I didn’t agree to your being here,” he said.

“Really? Then you’ll have to discuss that with Mlle La Tour’s agent. Oh, wait! That would be me.” Daisy folded her hands, fig-leaf fashion.

A deceptively innocent gesture, he thought.

“Blanche has requested that I represent her in this matter,” the infuriating chit explained.

“How on God’s earth do you know a French courtesan?” he demanded.

“Through my great-aunt, Isabella Haversham,” Daisy said sweetly. “Both Blanche and I are staying at Lady Wexford’s home for the Season.”

Of course.
He’d totally forgotten the connection between the houses of Wexford and Drake. It was a tenuous, by-marriage sort of relationship, the kind maintained only by people who genuinely liked one another, since no actual blood tie bound them.

Daisy Drake in residence certainly explained how Lady Wexford heard about his project so quickly. Daisy probably put her up to inviting him to that blasted ball, probably urged Blanche to—No, Blanche was not the sort who could be cajoled into doing anything if it didn’t please her. She was too strong-minded for that.