Shameless (42 page)

“Everyone is deserving of a second chance, Hugh.” Beth begged him with her eyes.

“Do you wish for a second chance, then?” Nick asked Neil directly.

Beth held her breath as she redirected that beseeching look to Neil. He met her gaze, and his mouth tightened.

“Who would not? Certainly I do.”

She let out her breath on a little sigh.

“Hell and the devil confound it—saving your presence, of course, Beth.” Hugh looked, and sounded, immensely put out. He looked at Nick. “So what’s to be done, then? Accept him into the family?”

Neil stirred at the savage tone of that, but before he could add more to the conversation, as Beth was quite sure he meant to do, and probably to his own detriment, because Hugh’s words had clearly put up his back, Nick forestalled him.

“I think the thing to do would be to follow their original plan of repairing to London and letting him shelter at Richmond House until the dust settles. Meanwhile, the body must be buried with a great many witnesses, and word sent to the proper authority that the Angel
of Death is no longer among us—which, if he comports himself as we must hope he will do, will be perfectly true.”

“And what about this havey-cavey marriage?”

“A problem for another time.” Nick lowered his pistol. As Hugh, with a hard look at Neil, slowly followed suit, Beth flew across the room to hug them both.

T
HE JOURNEY TO
L
ONDON
was accomplished in a speedy three days. Because it was agreed that they should be seen as little as possible, Neil and Beth were closeted together in a hired closed carriage that jolted and rocked and pitched sickeningly from side to side, although Neil would have much preferred to ride. His every move was watched with suspicion by the men who accompanied the carriage, namely Richmond and DeVane riding beside, and two others on the box, which irked Neil to no end. Fearing that so many outriders would attract the very attention they most wished to avoid, the rest had been deputed to stay behind and accord the body a proper burial, then make their way to London separately, and at a more leisurely pace. Two nights were passed upon the road, in small, unfashionable inns where they were less likely to encounter their fellow travelers. Though it was clear that it stuck in the craws of her disapproving relations, Neil slept both nights with his wife, and took some small degree of satisfaction from the look on Richmond’s face when they retired to a single chamber
together. It was, however, the only satisfaction he got. They passed no more than seven hours in each inn, Beth was exhausted from the day’s jolting, with the surety of another day just like it before them, and he was far too canny in the ways of women to do more than sleep at her side. Besides, he was tired, too, and maddeningly aware of the thinness of the wall separating them from the others. It did not require superior judgment to conclude that those brief rest stops were no place to tutor Beth in the true joys of lovemaking. And after his recent assault on her—because, in the cold light of another day, that was the only way he could, shamefacedly, think of what he had done—he had a great deal to make up for in that regard. He was fortunate that she seemed prepared to give him another chance.

He had never actually wooed a woman, but he meant to woo Beth, with as much gentle care as he could command. On their wedding night, when she had ordered him to just go ahead and bed her, he had seen the fear that had prompted her speech and realized that, although his intention had been to take his time and seduce her until she was mindless and melting with passion, the actual best course of action was to get her damned virginity out of the way and have done. Afterward, his thinking had gone, he would have all the time in the world to make things right. Having most unexpectedly found her, he was not about to let her go again. She had married him to save his life and keep him from killing Richmond. He had married her because he wanted her, because having found the lovely bright warmth of her, he was loath to lose it again and plunge back into the darkness his existence had been before she came into it, because—oh, for any number of excellent reasons that he had no desire to sort through just at present. Having wed her, he had then made sure of her by bedding her. With that done, there had been, he judged, no need to rush his fences. Then the Butcher had attacked, scaring the life out of him for Beth’s sake rather than his own, and he had lost control along with his temper and his judgment and made a complete debacle of his plan to gently woo her. As a result, her initiation into the pleasures of sex had been, he feared, shamefully devoid of pleasure,
which he meant to do his best to remedy as soon as he had the time and privacy to do so. So far, that had not yet been accorded them, but once London was reached he had every hope that the situation would be speedily remedied.

“Explain to me,” Beth said, fixing him with a sapient look as they were once again being jarred to pieces in the ill-sprung carriage, “why you and Hugh must be constantly at each other’s throats?”

That was after the brief nuncheon break on the second day, when Hugh had inquired for what must have been the dozenth time of Beth, as she was mounting again into the carriage, if she was sure she would not like either him or Nick to ride inside with the pair of them. Beth replied, as she had each time before, that she was perfectly fine with being left alone with Neil. Neil, already inside the carriage, as his breaks were of necessity of much shorter duration than Beth’s, with a view to keeping him concealed whenever possible, held out his hand to her to assist her over the threshold, smiled at Hugh over her head, and assured him that he had no thought of harming his new bride yet.

In Neil’s estimation, Hugh’s fuming expression was almost worth the glare Beth shot him.

“He doesn’t like to see me with you,” Neil answered. He was seated across from her, in the backward-facing seat because he was too inured to discomfort to be bothered particularly by it and because he had no wish to add to her misery by crowding her on the other seat. Honesty compelled him to add, “I don’t blame him. Were I in his shoes and he in mine, I wouldn’t like it either.”

“But you were friends once.”

“At Eton.” He had already told her, when she had asked how he knew Hugh, that they had been at school together, with the older boy, Hugh, sometimes stepping in to protect the more belligerent, younger one, Neil, from the consequences of his hasty tongue and ready fists. “He stopped a few fights, interceded with a few prefects on my behalf. I was usually grateful—once my temper cooled, that is. But after I left—all right, ran away from—Eton, I didn’t see him again until we
encountered each other in our professional capacities during the course of the war. As each of us was operating under an assumed identity at the time, our renewed relationship did not flourish. In fact, he probably felt as uneasy about my existence as I felt about his. Either of us could have exposed the other for who he really was at any time. Neither of us ever did, though, and I suppose, since his continued silence has made it possible for me to hope to be able to pick up the threads of my old life, I owe him one. I expect I will tell him so, one of these days, when he is a little less ready to believe I mean to ill-treat you.”

“He regards me as his sister, you know,” Beth said excusingly. “He has done so much for us. Indeed, I tremble to think what would have happened to Claire had she not met him. We all—Gabby and I, and Claire most of all—love him devotedly.”

Neil made a face at her. “I don’t doubt it. Richmond was always most heroic. The last time I saw him, on the field at Waterloo, he was leading a charge into an almost overwhelming sea of Frogs, pluck to the backbone all the way. I should say, the last time I saw him before yesterday.”

“You were at Waterloo?”

He nodded. “Every military man who could get there must have fought on that day. I served under Wellington’s command. I have no great opinion of him, but by God he turned Boney back! It was a near run thing, I can tell you, with the very future of England at stake.”

“But that makes you a hero, too!”

The pride in her eyes both surprised and touched him, but he gave a derisive laugh and shook his head. “Not I, my girl. I leave the heroics to those of Richmond’s stamp.”

She smiled at him, clearly unconvinced, and he found the smile disturbing enough on many levels to cause him to change the subject.

It was not until the following day that she came back to it. By this time the novelty of being confined for long hours in a stuffy, poorly sprung carriage, existing on bad food and little sleep, had completely waned. Not even the riders were in a good humor, and they at least had the felicity of being out in the open air. Beth had been lying back
against the seat for an hour or more with her eyes closed, having complained of a headache after quarreling with him again over what she termed his obstinate refusal to be conciliating with Richmond. The landscape outside the window—he had parted the curtains a little, despite having been straightly charged not to do so—was dull, and so he occupied himself with looking at her.

He studied the resplendent waves of her hair, which had been twisted up in the most ladylike of fashions when they had begun their journey that dawn, only to have devolved into a precarious knot that let many delightful tendrils escape to curl against her creamy skin as the day wore on. His eyes traced the slim black brows that had, when she had last looked at him, signaled her displeasure at him by slanting to almost meet above her nose. The dark fans of her lashes lay still against her cheeks, making him think she truly was asleep and not just avoiding conversation. He took in the slender length of her nose, the square lines of her jaw and high cheekbones, the lush curve of her lips.

Beautiful
was the first thought that came into his head. His second, close on its heels, was a fierce
Mine
.

“What I don’t understand,” she said, opening her eyes to catch him staring, causing him to flush a little, as though she could somehow divine the tenor of his thoughts, “is how you came to be at Eton in the first place.”

“My father sent me there.” He recovered from his surprise with aplomb.

“But I thought your mother took you with her to France.” He had already told her that his parents had separated when he was very young, with his aristocratic French mother fleeing with Isobel and himself to her native country.

“She did. We lived with her widowed mother, most happily, until at the height of the Terror a servant appeared and whisked me away. Stole me away, rather, leaving a message for my mother to tell her that His Grace the Duke of Wychester did not care for his heir to be exposed to the danger that was France and would henceforth care for him in England.”

“That must have been terrible. How old were you?”

“Not quite eight.”

“Poor little boy!”

“Indeed, I thought so. I hated my father for taking me. He was a cold, cruel man in any case, not one to endear himself to children. My mother came once to try to beseech him into letting her have me again, but he threw her out on her ear. My emotions when I was forcefully detached from her on this occasion were violent enough to persuade him to send me away to school. I threatened to kill him, I believe.”

“Anyone might have done so!”

He smiled at her. “You are determined to see me in the best possible light, aren’t you?”

“You
are determined to see yourself in the worst!” She shook her head at him. “But continue. You were sent to school. Did you not then have any more contact with your mama until—” There she broke off delicately.

“She wrote to me at school. She and Isobel were most faithful correspondents. When I ran away from Eton—I was on the verge of being kicked out for fighting, and had no wish to be sent back to my father’s tender care, which was what they were threatening to do—it was with the intention of making my way to them in France. I ended up working for Mr. Creed at the White Swan in an attempt to raise the ready. The rest you know.”

“Yes.” She looked thoughtful. “But what I don’t know is how you wound up becoming an assassin. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing one could just fall into.”

He laughed, and as he did so he realized that he had never in his life thought that he could laugh about such a topic. But she was so ridiculously matter-of-fact about something that should by rights have had her shuddering with revulsion that he couldn’t help it.

“What’s funny?” She regarded him so suspiciously that he laughed again.

“You, Madame Roux.” When she gave him her quick frown he
was conscious of a strong urge to shift to the seat beside her, wrap her in his arms, and kiss her breathless, but given the exigencies of the situation he most nobly refrained. Instead, he chose to answer her question. “After my mother and sister were killed, I went, I admit it, a little mad for a while. I thirsted for vengeance, and I took it as best I could. My tribute to them was to kill everyone I could get to who I felt was responsible for their deaths, from the prison guards who took my bribes but did nothing to help them, to the farmer in Dijon who sold the whereabouts of their hiding place to the soldiers who sought them. In the course of this bloody rampage, I encountered someone else who was bent more or less on the same job, except he was being paid by the British government to do it. He recognized in me a like-minded soul who he judged suitable to be trained as an assassin, and passed the word up the chain. I was approached, accepted, trained, and sent out. As Richmond told you, I became the best at what I do. I was even proud of how good I was at it.”