Leslie Lafoy (14 page)

Irresistible to the point of stupidity, actually. A man of his age, his experience … And his circumstances. Tristan shook his head and turned toward the gate, finally giving in to the tired voice of common sense. If Simone ever pressed him on why he hadn’t met her as he’d promised, his only hope would be trying to explain his larger concerns. Maybe, with a bit of luck, she’d consider him slightly more noble than spineless.

The rustle was quiet but stopped him in his tracks. Holding his breath, he strained to hear as he turned to face the direction from which it had come. A shadow within the shadows of the house moved and he squinted into the darkness, straining to make out the details. Tall, slender, long legged. Dark from head to toe. His gaze skimmed the length of it. Part of his mind whimpered with relief. The other part …

Good God Almighty. Simone. Wearing pants. And he’d thought she had enticing curves in a split skirt? His heart hammered and his loins heated and tightened as he watched her saunter across the garden toward him. It was going to be damn difficult to get her stripped out of those trousers with any sort of efficiency. A skirt was certainly less inspiring, but it required considerably less effort to get under.

“You weren’t about to give up on me, were you?”

He blinked, moistened his lips, and forced his brain to think in the moment. Not that the moment was all that conducive to cogent thought or intelligent repartee. She was dressed so simply—black trousers, black shirt, black boots, black jacket—but every inch of it all was so beautifully tailored that his only thought was of how badly he wanted to wrap his arms around her and pull those luscious curves against his body again. She was so warm, so delicious.

She stopped a circumspect distance from him. “I intended to be waiting for you when you arrived, but I was delayed by a brief crisis of conscience.”

Conscience.
The gears of his brain slowly ground to a semblance of normal functioning. “Apparently you overcame its nagging.”

She smiled and shrugged. “To some degree.”

“I know the feeling,” he admitted.

“You do?”

“Intellect seldom approves of impulse, and the battle between the two can be especially ugly.”

“If only intellect weren’t so dreadfully dull and ever so predictable,” she observed with a small laugh that ignited his senses. “Impulse has considerably more fun.”

“Until the piper has to be paid,” he countered, thinking that the tension in this moment was the payment for having run so freely with an impulse that morning. If his brain and conscience had been working then, he would have seen the pitfall of pressing her for this meeting. But no, they’d decided to stay home this morning and snooze most of the day away, leaving him with nothing but a penis for guidance.

“Yes, the piper,” Simone said, interrupting his silent tirade. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if he were to announce at the start just what the price might be? It would make decisions so much easier to make.”

“I gather that you’re here to officially and ever so politely decline my invitation.”

She considered him for a long moment, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Finally she sighed, shook her head, and answered, “Intellect and impulse aren’t quite done battering each other.”

That he heard a reason to hope in her words … He was well beyond pathetic. “Oh, I don’t know. The fact that you’re standing a good arm’s distance away tells me the contest is fairly well done and I’ve come out the loser.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to be,” he assured her. “Truth be told, while I’ve been waiting here for you, I’ve been sorting the pros and cons myself and coming to the same sort of hesitation.”

Her smile was weak. “But probably not for the same reasons.”

He had two options: assure her that social expectations actually mattered to him and walk away, or tell her the whole sordid, unappealing truth and hope to hell he could find some sort of balance between nobility and lust.

“There are some things you should know about me,” he said, choosing. “About what’s going on around me, before you make any decisions that involve spending time in my company.”

Her smile instantly went from ear to ear and, even in the darkness, he could see the light dancing in her eyes when she asked, “Are you a wanted felon?”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Damn,” she replied, chuckling. “That would have been exciting. So tell me what’s so horribly troubling.”

Now that he was to the point of having to put it all into words … She was going to think he’d lost his mind. “You might want to have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the garden bench near the back gate as he considered the dilemma he’d created for himself. “This is going to take a while.”

“All right.” She walked off, leaving him to trail in her wake and try to keep his mind focused on framing his explanation. He arrived at the bench moments behind her, certain only of the fact that he’d never in his life seen a more cuppable, more perfectly shaped derriere.

“I’m now sitting.”

Thank God.
Tristan cleared his throat and began with the first noncarnal thought that staggered through his awareness. “I always suspected that my father lived life larger than his financial resources really could allow.” She looked up at him soberly and nodded. Tristan drew a deep breath and went on, saying, “Not that I had any proof of it, mind you. Confirmation of my suspicions came only recently and in a letter from my brother James. He inherited the estate after my father and eldest brother were killed.

“When James died and I was summoned home, I found the estate to be just as impoverished as he’d led me to believe. If I hadn’t had a personal fortune available to pay the debts, everything would have been on the auction block the day after my arrival in London.”

“Considering the way Lucinda is living,” she posed, “you must have been very generous with your fortune.”

“I haven’t given Lucinda so much as a tuppence.”

“Well, that rather begs the question of who has, doesn’t it?” she asked brightly. “If the estate is teetering on the edge, she certainly couldn’t be drawing an allowance from it that would let her live as she does and give Emmy a Season, too.”

“I had the very same thoughts.”

“And have you found an answer?”

“Not one I like,” he supplied. “It seems that Lucinda received substantial sums of money following the deaths of my father and brothers.”

“From who?” She frowned. “Or is it whom?”

He grinned. “The
whom
is various insurance companies. Apparently she had the incredible foresight to take out substantial policies on their lives just weeks before their unexpected demises.”

“That’s not foresight,” she countered. “Once, yes, but three times? Three times adds up to a motive for murder.”

“You have a wonderfully suspicious mind.”

She grinned up at him. “Thank you for noticing. Has she taken out a policy on you?”

“And quick, too,” he offered, dropping down beside her on the bench. The scent of cloves and sandalwood wafted around him and strummed tauntingly over his senses. “I haven’t been able to find out. Confidentiality and all that. It stands to reason, though, that she would have. She does like her money.”

“Well, money would certainly be a part of it, but I think it’s more likely to be her secondary motive. I’d think she’d be far more interested in eliminating someone who suspects what she’s done and might bring the authorities down on her.”

Tristan shook his head, knowing that Simone’s logic, while perfectly sound, was following the wrong course. “I don’t have any proof. And the deaths of my father and brothers have cleared the inquests. There are no official suspicions surrounding her.”

“Did they investigate her finances before reaching their conclusions?”

“Apparently it didn’t even cross their minds that she might be anything more than the grieving widow and stepmother.”

“That and that being around her could be fatal and the sooner they got her gone from their courtroom the better. If you were to provide the financial information, might they be willing to reinvestigate?”

He gave her a slight shrug and leaned his back against the fence as he answered, “They found the suspicion intriguing, but of insufficient weight to spend the Crown’s money on an official investigation.”

“But they do know what you suspect. And they’ve made note of it somewhere?”

“They do and they have.”

“Does Lucinda know that you’ve spoken with them?”

“No.”

She turned on the bench, drawing her leg up to tuck her booted foot behind her knee. Her other knee pressed against his upper thigh as she leaned forward and asked, “How can you be sure?”

Sure of what? How easily he could wrap her in his arms? How little effort it would take to draw her closer? Seconds. He could have her straddling his lap in mere seconds. She’d be perfectly positioned for his hands to explore that invitingly curved backside of hers, and there wasn’t any velvet to worrry about cru—

“Tristan?”

He cocked a brow and forced himself to breathe and swallow.

“I asked how you could be sure that Lucinda doesn’t know that you’ve talked to the authorities.”

Who the hell cared about Lucinda? He cleared his throat and willed the fantasy from the front of his brain. “I came into harbor, disembarked, and went straight to the solicitor’s office. From there I went to find Noland. All of it was done within the first two hours I was back on English soil and well before word reached Lucinda that I’d returned.”

“Why did you go see Noland?”

“He dabbles a bit at Scotland Yard.”

“Well how about that,” she said softly, shaking her head. “He looks so harmless.”

“And he is. He specializes in puzzles and paper crimes. When his investigations come down to the use of muscle and grit, he merely points the way for those so inclined.”

“I never would have guessed.”

Tristan smiled. “And neither has Lucinda.”

The nymph beside him nodded slowly. “So she’s thinking that she needs to be sure that you don’t live long enough to give them a nudge. Do you think she does her own dirty work or is she more likely to hire it done?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Probably more likely to do it herself. Hiring it done would leave her open to blackmail. Unless of course she dispatches her hirelings once they’ve served their purpose. But timing and luck would be crucial if she went that way. One slip, one miscalculation, and she’d be in trouble.” She shook her head. “No, she does it herself.”

“I agree.”

“Given that three men in your family have already died under…” She cleared her throat softly. “Um…”

“Yes?”

She cleared her throat again and offered him a clearly apologetic smile before saying, “Haywood felt compelled to tell me stories of the Lunatic Lockwoods that first night.”

Of course. It was nice, though, that she felt awkward about it all. “Not to worry, Simone. I expected that he would the second I was out of the carriage. It’s all public knowledge.”

“Well then, given that your father and eldest brother died in what everyone considers a murder-suicide, and your other brother ended up in the Thames, Lucinda has to be thinking that her luck might be running a little thin. I mean, with you it would be four deaths.… A fourth one by foul play would raise even normally naive eyebrows. So would a third by suicide. Seems to me that making your death look like an accident is the way she’d have to be thinking of doing you in.”

“Absolutely fascinating.”

She knitted her brows. “What are you talking about?”

“Your mind,” he explained, willing to be only half-honest. “It works in the most amazing and unexpected way.”
And I find it incredibly sensual.

“How’s that?” She smiled and the light in her eyes danced as she considered him.

God, he wanted to make love to her. Right here, right now. He expelled a long, slow breath to settle his impulses and collect his wits. “Has it occurred to you yet that being anywhere near me might—however inadvertently—place you in danger?”

“No.” She pursed her lips, looked up at the night sky for a second or two, and then brought her gaze down to meet his as she brightly announced, “There, I considered it. Where was Lucinda the night the party went up in flames?”

Did Simone have even the slightest idea of how she was torturing him? “Presumably at home,” he managed to say. “I don’t know that for certain, though. She might have gone out after Em and I left for the party. You’re thinking that she might have started the fire in an attempt to do me in?”

“It’s a possibility,” she answered, shrugging one delectable shoulder. “It wouldn’t be at all suspicious to the authorities. Just another tragic loss for England’s Black Widow.”

“I don’t know. I think Lucinda would want it to be more personal.” He smiled at the mental image. “You know, to actually see my face as she runs me down with her town coach.”

“You’re too quick to run down with any sort of efficiency.”

Tristan cocked a brow and met her gaze. “And how do you know that?”

“I watched you come down the rope that night. You’re impressively strong and agile.”

Virile, too,
he silently added. “I didn’t know you were watching.”

“But you were hoping that I was,” she laughingly countered, leaning sideways to crash her shoulder into his in just the way that he and his friends had jostled each other in their youth. He was still puzzling the gesture when she asked, “How are you going to draw Lucinda out and expose her?”

He considered her, his brows knitted. “Did I say that was my plan?”

“Well, if it’s not, you’re a dead man, and considering how much you like having your heart go pitter-pat, I figure you’re thinking about how to keep it pumping right along.”

It wasn’t his heart that was interested in pumping at the moment. “And what would you suggest as a tactic to force her hand?” he asked, desperately trying to distract himself.

“I don’t know. But I presume that you’ve given it some thought. What have you come up with?”

That I don’t give a damn about Lucinda and that I’m tired of talking.
Once again he expelled a long breath and tamped down his impulses. “I tend to think that Lucinda is more interested in deepening her pockets than she is worried about being caught at it.”