Irresistible (38 page)

"So you love me, do you?" he growled, looming mock-menacingly above her, and then before she could reply he kissed her with a hot hunger that set her pulse to racing and weakened her knees. Claire abandoned her indignation at the first touch of his lips to hers, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him back with feverish abandon, her fingers clenching in the thick silk of his hair. Leaning against her, pressing her back against the cool plaster wall with the weight of his body, he left her in no doubt about the urgency of his desire for her.

When he lifted his head at last, she was dizzy. She clung to him, wanting never to let him go, wanting to imprint the feel and smell and taste of him on her mind and heart and body forever.

"I love you too," he said in a low, shaken voice, his eyes flaming down at her. And then he kissed her again, his arms coming around her to pull her up tight against him, so tight she could feel the rapid rise and fall of his chest against her breasts, the heat of his skin through his clothes, the hard, swollen tumescence of his body.

Just when Claire thought he must lay her down and take her right there among the cloaks and she was perfectly ready to have him do so, he lifted his head, took a deep breath, and pushed himself away from her until he was holding her at arm's length.

"Hugh." It was rather in the nature of a shameless whimper, but even as she recognized the pleading quality of her voice Claire didn't care. She felt shameless. She was light-headed and weak-kneed and aquiver from wanting him, and she tightened her grip on his neck. He was not putting her away from him so easily.

"I have to go," he said, sounding satisfyingly short of breath. Her eyes narrowed as she remembered that he had said the same thing on the dance floor. "I'll be away for a few days. That's why I came— to tell you good-bye."

Her back stiffened with alarm. He would not have come to Almack's to bid her farewell if he'd been heading off to a simple sojourn in the country.

"Where are you going?" Her voice was filled with dread, and her eyes searched his face. "Not— not back to France?"

It was as much a plea as a question.

"I can't tell you." He pulled her close again, dropped a quick, hard kiss on her mouth, and tugged her arms from around his neck. "Go now. I sent Stevens on an errand, but he should be back anytime now and you don't want him to see you. And James has a carriage waiting for me around the corner. I'll be home by Wednesday at the latest. Then we'll see what we can do about sorting this mess out."

But at the moment Claire was less concerned about sorting the situation out than she was about the danger she sensed, with every fiber of her being, he was going into.

"Hugh, please," she begged, clinging to his hands, "don't go."

"I have to." His expression was suddenly grim. "I wouldn't otherwise, believe me. Be careful while I'm gone, angel eyes."

With that he dropped another quick kiss on her mouth and was gone.

Chapter 29

It was late the following night, and the moon rode high in the sky. By its faint light, Hugh was making his way through fields that had once been as familiar to him as the back of his hand. He had spent the earliest years of his childhood at Hayleigh Castle, and the unwelcome memories crowded into his exhausted brain despite his best efforts to keep them out. Having spent practically every minute of the last twenty-four hours in the saddle, he was dead tired— too tired to fight off the ghosts of his past. So he let them come, marveling that they still had the power to move him.

With James beside him, he was riding through the thick gorse on his way to Hayleigh's Point, where he was to meet an informant. According to the message Hugh had received, the man knew the whereabouts of Sophy Towbridge. The woman had disappeared, seemingly off the face of the earth, on the night when Hugh had first met Claire. Even the combined efforts of some of Britain's best agents had failed to find her— or the information she had taken with her.

Tonight, perhaps, that mystery would be solved.

When the man stepped out from behind a bush brandishing a shovel, Hugh was startled. His horse was no less so, and reared, whinnying shrilly. Taken unawares, Hugh was thrown, just as quick as that, to land hard on his arse in the thick weeds. For a moment he sat where he had landed, stunned.

The thought that was foremost in his mind was a groaning
not again
.

"Master Hugh!" James gasped, and fumbled for the weapon in his own pocket even as Hugh grabbed for his pistol.

"Eh, I make you me apologies, yer worships." The man with the shovel sounded abashed. Having stopped dead at the sight of Hugh's drawn pistol, he was little more than a bulky shape in the darkness. "I'd no thought to scare ye."

"Think nothing of it," Hugh said sourly, getting to his feet. His initial assessment was that the man was harmless, but after that fall from his horse he was taking no chances and kept his pistol at the ready.

"Are you all right?" James asked, holding Hugh's skittish horse by the reins.

"Fine," Hugh said, casting a wary glance around before focusing on the man before him. The fall had left him wide awake and on edge. He looked at the man again. "Are you Marley?"

"Aye. And you would be…?"

"The party you seek."

"Playing it close to the vest, are ye?" Marley chuckled. "If ye brought the money, that's all the introduction I need."

"I did." Hugh motioned to James, who untied a small leather bag filled with guineas from his saddle and tossed it to Marley, who caught it deftly in one hand. Dropping the shovel, he opened the bag and peered inside. Apparently satisfied, he closed it again.

"You've got your money. Where's Sophy Towbridge?"

"This way." Marley gestured to them to follow him. Hugh did, keeping a wary eye out for a possible ambush. The information he had received had said the man would be alone, but he wasn't taking any chances. "There."

Marley pointed toward the ground. Looking down, Hugh discovered a partially opened grave. Moonlight glinted off a skull still topped, most grotesquely, with a hank of filthy but still recognizable blond hair.

"That's her?" James, having followed him on foot with both horses in tow, stared down at the grave, then glanced at Hugh, shaking his head. "No wonder no one's been able to find her."

"What about the papers she was carrying?" Hugh asked Marley.

Marley reached inside his jacket, rooted around, and came up with an oilskin pouch, which he handed to Hugh. With a glance at James, Hugh opened it and looked inside. There were three neatly folded letters. It was too dark to read them, but Hugh was fairly sure he'd at last found what he'd long sought.

Hugh nodded at James, and tucked the pouch inside his own coat.

"Can I cover her up now?" Marley asked. "I wouldn't like any o' the others to know I showed her to ye."

"Go ahead." Hugh started to turn away, then bethought himself of something. "There was another lady here on the Point on the same night as Sophy Towbridge. She was abducted from her carriage, I believe. Do you know anything about that?"

Marley shrugged. "I might."

"How much?" Hugh had the measure of his man.

"Double."

"Done." Hugh nodded at James, who extracted the required amount from the saddlebag that held their emergency fund and handed the roll of soft over to Marley.

He counted it and then thrust it into his pocket.

"The other lady?" Hugh prompted.

Marley snorted. "Ye mean the little besom what hit Briggs over the head with his own chamber pot, I take it. We was hired to snatch her out of her carriage and do away with her. It just so happened that we was to do it on the selfsame night as we was also hired to escort another lady, who turned out to be this Sophy Towbridge here, down to the beach at Hayleigh's Point to meet a boat. We didn't know nothin' about her bein' a French spy at that point, I swear we didn't. So we had both ladies at the same time, you see, all snug in the same farmhouse although neither knew the other was there. Then we got word that the search was on for a French spy, by name Miss Sophy Towbridge. Well, these ladies we were holding were of very different sorts, you understand, and one of them, in the course of gettin' real friendly with our leader, had told him that her name was Sophy Towbridge. What kind of coincidence was that? we asked ourselves. Then we answered ourselves: No kind of coincidence at all. Our Miss Sophy Towbridge and the one that was supposed to be a spy for the Frenchies nearly had to be one and the same. So we started working a deal where we was going to sell her back to His Majesty's government, right? Only it was going to take a little time. So we kept her right where she was, and in the end she never got down to the beach at all. But that left us with a problem: The Frenchies were sending a boat to pick Sophy Towbridge up, and them Frenchies can get right testy if you double-cross them. So we asked ourselves, what to do? And the answer was right there, plain as the nose on yer face, just beautiful. We had another lady— the
other
lady— who we was supposed to kill. So we thought to ourselves, why not kill that other lady and tell the Frenchies that the dead lady was Sophy Towbridge, only she unfortunately died? That gets us off the hook with the Frenchies, and we still have our dead lady to give back to those that paid us to kill her. It was a beautiful plan, if I do say so myself. But the other lady fouled it up by escaping, and we never could find her again to kill her. I hear she's in London all safe and sound now. And Sophy Towbridge fell down the stairs at the farmhouse the next morning and broke her neck. Just like that, dead. So we was out the money for her, too."

He shook his head dismally.

"Who hired you to snatch the lady out of her carriage?" Hugh asked.

Marley shrugged.

"Now that I don't know. Donen's the one who handled that end of it."

"Donen?" Hugh questioned, having to work to keep his voice even. He didn't want his informant to stop talking now. But hearing the man relate so cheerfully his and his cronies' plans to murder Claire made him want to wrap his hands around the man's neck and squeeze until there was no life left in him. "Where can I find him?"

"Ah, he's gone off somewhere." That had a purposeful vagueness to it that made Hugh suspect that Marley knew very well where Donen had gone.

"Where?" Hugh couldn't keep the sharpness out of his voice.

Marley shrugged.

"Tell me everything you know, and I'll double your money for you yet again," Hugh said.

Marley perked up like a hunting dog scenting game.

Without even being asked, James moved toward the saddlebags again. There wasn't enough left in the emergency fund, so in the end Hugh and James were reduced to digging through their own purses and pockets, but eventually enough was cobbled together to satisfy Marley.

"It's a pleasure doing business with you gents, it is," Marley said genially as he stuffed his pockets full of cash.

"Donen?" Hugh asked grimly.

"Remember the other lady that I told you about? Well, you see, there's this job…."

As he listened, Hugh felt his blood run cold.

Chapter 30

By the time thirty-six hours had passed since she had confessed her love for Hugh, Claire had worked herself up into a near paroxysm of guilt and fear. She loved Hugh. That was a fact, and over the course of two sleepless nights she had come to accept it as immutable. The thought of what he might at that very moment be doing was torturous. She had little doubt that whatever it was involved his work as an intelligence officer, which meant that it was inherently dangerous. She had to force herself not to dwell on it. Instead she tried to imagine welcoming him home again all safe and sound. That admittedly tantalizing image brought with it its own set of problems: When Hugh did come home, she was going to become his mistress.

There was nothing else to be done. She loved him far too much to try any longer to keep him at arm's length.

Unfortunately, the thought of so blatantly breaking her marriage vows, to say nothing of dishonoring herself and potentially, if her liaison with Hugh was ever discovered, bringing social calumny down on her innocent family, was enough to make her ill.

Finally, on the second morning after Hugh had left, Claire heard the unmistakable sounds of David letting himself into the house just as dawn streaked the sky. She had lain awake all night, agonizing over what to do, and as she listened to David making his way up the stairs she was consumed with guilt over what she was contemplating doing. Never mind that David had very likely lain with many women since their marriage. Never mind that she felt no love or even liking for him now, and never would again. The fact remained that he was her husband. If he cared for her even a little, or could be brought to care for her, she owed it to the vows she had made to rededicate herself to her marriage and to him.

With a heavy heart, Claire climbed out of bed and padded to her bedroom door. She could not rest until she had this sorted out in her mind. She already knew what the solution would be if she decided it solely by the promptings of her heart.

Stepping out into the still-shadowy upstairs hall, she found herself almost face-to-face with David. He blinked at her in surprise, then frowned.

"You look like hell, Madam Wife," he said by way of greeting. "Seeing you with your face all shiny and wearing nothing but your shimmy quite reminds me of why I quit coming to your bed."

She was wearing a perfectly modest night rail, but as his eyes raked her from her tousled hair to her bare toes, Claire felt herself flush. He sneered, and she realized that he was deliberately trying to hurt her.

A sudden insight into her husband's character came to her in that instant: David enjoyed inflicting pain.

"You really
don't
love me, do you?" she asked quietly, taking an instinctive step back away from him. "I don't think you ever did."

"Are you by any chance trying to entice me into your bed?" David glanced past her, through the open door of her bedchamber, at the massive, rumpled four-poster that she had only ever occupied alone.