Authors: Christine Wells

Sweetest Little Sin (7 page)

BOOK: Sweetest Little Sin

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Of course, Louisa recognized the bold, slashing hand, and equally, the impatience in that imperious command.

She clenched her hand into a fist again, crushing the message.

Rage licked through her body like a house fire. Confound him! Did he think she’d jump to his bidding now? He’d wanted her out of his life, and yet he expected her to comply with such a terse, rude order?

Jardine crooked his finger without giving her one earthly reason why she should jeopardize her reputation and her safety to come to him. Or had his overabundant caution been a sham all these years?

“Darling, what do you think?” Millicent twirled in front of the looking glass, sporting a frivolous poke bonnet with a fall of dyed ostrich plumes that curled around its brim to tickle her cheek. It probably cost all of thirty guineas.

Louisa plastered a smile on her face. “Oh yes, indeed! Ravishing! Did I not say as much? It might have been made for you, Mama.”

THAT night, Louisa didn’t sleep. The fragment of a message haunted her, tormented even as it tempted.

She was done with Jardine. Moreover, he’d told her plainly she meant nothing to him. Why couldn’t her idiotic heart remember that? Why did that pathetic organ continually overrule her brain when it came to Jardine?

He wanted to meet. Why? In the past, if he’d needed to see her, he’d simply appeared. Perhaps he was being watched and didn’t want to lead anyone to her? But if the matter was important, surely he might have sent word to her some other way.

Was it a test? Was he toying with her? Did he risk this meeting to see whether she would still come running, like a dog to heel? She rubbed a hand over her face, pressed her closed eyelids with her fingertips, willing herself not to succumb to useless tears. Ah, she ought to have known a break with Jardine would leave jagged edges.

She sat curled on the window seat for hours, deep into the night. Forced herself to consider the peremptory summons from every angle, calmly, dispassionately.

And couldn’t think of a single reason, beyond a nagging curiosity and her unbearable longing to see him, why she should go.

Unfolding her long body from the cushioned embrasure, Louisa took a spill from the mantel, touching it to the fire. Shielding the flame with her hand, she transferred it to her candle and watched the wick flare to life. With a shiver of anticipation, she carried the candle over to her escritoire and set it in the carved holder.

Her mouth firmed in determination, she took out the card Faulkner had given her and drew a piece of writing paper toward her.

Dipping her pen in ink, she composed a short note.

I accept.

Four

BLIND fury possessed Jardine like hell’s demons all the way to Lord Vane’s exclusive boxing saloon. He stalked into the large, airy apartment full of the smell of sweat and liniment and ripe with curses and the smack of fist on flesh. Sighting steel, he ripped a rapier from the wall and tapped Nick on the shoulder with the button-tipped foil.

The blue blaze of Nick’s gaze met his squarely. An eyebrow quirked, then Nick gently moved the blade away from his person with his palm.

“Not swords, Jardine. You know I can’t abide the things.” He flicked a glance at a couple of meaty pugilists who grunted and danced around one another. “I’ll take a few rounds in the ring with you, though.”

Jardine’s customary mode of hand-to-hand combat would not be welcome in Vane’s boxing saloon. He curled his lip. “Peasant.”

“A peasant who doesn’t happen to wish for an early death, or at least not at your hands, my friend.”

The levity didn’t make Jardine smile, but it took the edge off his temper. He lowered the foil, tapped the tip lightly on the ground, and paced to the window. The view wasn’t enlivening. Vane’s establishment was in a shady part of town.

He turned back. “She didn’t come.”

He’d waited in that damned musty bookshop for two hours before he’d given up hope.

“She’s trying to punish me, of course.” He wanted to believe it, but the finality of their parting was such that she could not possibly think such tactics would succeed in bringing him to heel.

Besides, Louisa wasn’t a woman who played games. She wouldn’t take up with another man unless she genuinely wanted him.

The notion shot pain through his chest, tossed fuel on the flames of his simmering rage. If it had been any other man, he’d still want to kill him, but Radleigh!

Jardine couldn’t sleep at night for worrying about Louisa in the clutches of that fiend. And at such a crucial time, when Jardine couldn’t afford to lay a finger on the bastard. It was exactly the situation he’d striven to avoid all these years.

Perhaps he should simply abduct Louisa and lock her in a tower somewhere. It had worked for Lyle.

Nick sighed. “Do you want me to talk to the lady? Warn her off?”

Slowly, Jardine shook his head, gazing into the distance, as if the four walls surrounding them had vanished.

“No, don’t do that.” He paused, turning it over in his mind. “Do you know, Nick, I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Yes, but how could this association have been orchestrated? To the outside world, you are barely acquainted with her.”

That was true, and he’d tried damned hard to keep it that way. But the affair of the Duchess of Lyle’s diary had drawn him into the open. If anyone besides Max and Kate had witnessed that scene between him and Louisa, standing over the dead body of a sick young man . . .

No, it was impossible. They’d been in the country, miles from civilization. Who besides the four of them and that hysterical maid of Kate’s had known he was there?

Inconceivable. And yet . . .

Icy fear slid down his spine. No. He didn’t believe in coincidence.

“IS that all?” Louisa tried not to move her lips as she spoke. She was tense, deflated, annoyed.

To outward appearances, she sat on a bench in the private garden of Berkeley Square, reading a novel.

If a man happened to be sitting at the other end of that same bench, she did not acknowledge him. And if anyone saw Louisa’s lips move as she read, they would merely think her the dim sort of female who needed to sound out the big words.

She’d heard nothing from Faulkner for several days after she’d dispatched that terse note. He’d kept her on tenterhooks for so long, she was ready to bite his head off now that he’d finally appeared.

She’d spent the intervening time cultivating Radleigh, against her better judgment. She’d expended time and energy screwing up her courage to accept the arduous mission Faulkner had planned for her. She might not be prepared to give her life for her country, but she’d fully expected to risk a limb at the very least.

It seemed she’d worked herself up over nothing.

Faulkner fished a hunk of bread out of his pocket. “We mustn’t run before we can walk, Lady Louisa. All you need do is procure an invitation to Radleigh’s forthcoming house party for one Mrs. Burton. She’s one of my most experienced agents. She will do the rest.”

The word
experienced
seemed heavily laced with irony. Suspicion awakened in Louisa’s mind. “And you can’t obtain the invitation yourself?”

She stole a glance at him, but his hat sat low on his head and its brim shadowed the craggy bulldog face. Even if she could discern his features, she knew his expression would give nothing away.

Faulkner tore a piece of bread and tossed it into the midst of a flurry of sparrows, who chirped and squabbled over the treat.

“I? A mere civil servant? No, my lady, I certainly cannot. The company is far too high in the instep for one such as I.”

A faint undercurrent of sarcasm—bitterness, even—made Louisa pause to wonder about Faulkner’s background. He spoke like a man who’d been educated at Oxbridge. But she must remember that Faulkner was in the business of deception, after all.

Who was he? Did he have a family, a wife? For some reason, she thought not. But the man’s private affairs were a mystery to her. In all likelihood, they would remain so.

Caution still rode on her shoulder. “I do not know this Mrs. Burton—”

“An introduction will be arranged. You will become very good friends with the lady. She is about your age, I should guess, and moves in genteel circles, though she doesn’t have the entrée to the highest society. That is about to change.” He paused for a moment. “Thanks to you.”

Louisa frowned. It was difficult to keep her eyes trained on her book, to remember to turn the pages. “Is she presentable?”

“Oh yes. She is that.” There was a smile in Faulkner’s voice, and when she darted a glance at him, she saw one on his face, too.

Misgivings scurried through Louisa’s mind, but she quelled them. Perhaps if she performed this small task satisfactorily, he’d trust her with more challenging work later on. At least she’d have something to take her mind off this intolerable impasse she’d reached with Jardine. Married, yet not a wife.

“Introduce us, then, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good.” His quick response showed he’d never doubted her compliance. “She will contrive to meet you. You will fall into conversation and be so well pleased with one another that you invite her to tea. From there, you will ask Mrs. Burton to go driving with you in that natty little phaeton of yours.”

She grimaced. “Thereby making the friendship as public as possible.”

“Exactly. It will come as no surprise to Radleigh when you beg him to include Mrs. Burton in his very exclusive little party. Play your cards right, and he won’t be in a position to refuse you.” He paused. “I hear you’ve made some progress in that direction already.”

She didn’t like the insinuation. “I have allowed him to squire me around, yes. Whether he will agree to invite Mrs. Burton, I cannot promise. . . .”

“Charm him, Lady Louisa. See that he invites her.”

She lifted her chin a little. “I am not a honey trap, Mr. Faulkner. I don’t excel at flummery.”

“Perhaps not. But he is a man, after all.”

“Mr. Radleigh merely wishes to align himself with my family, that’s all.”

“Ah.” Faulkner tossed the last piece of bread. “Yes, I expect you’re right.”

Irrationally, the response irritated her. “Well, if that’s all,
sir
. . .” She closed her book and rose.

“Yes, you’d best go.” He didn’t seem perturbed by her sarcasm. “Oh, and, my lady?”

Louisa stopped herself from turning back to look at him. She paused, her spine stiff and straight, waiting for some kind of benediction, perhaps even an expression of gratitude.

But the gravelly voice simply murmured, “Don’t try to contact me again.”