Tainted Angel (8 page)

It was well past midnight and Vidia was a bit worried as she clung to the Prince Regent’s arm, laughing at his latest jest and watching the watch fobs jingle together on his impressive abdomen. The room was heavy with smoke from cigars and cigarillos, and although the scent had never bothered her before, now it did. If I cast up my accounts on the Prince I imagine I can no longer count on him to pardon me for my crimes, she thought. I’d best excuse myself before such a disaster occurs.

But the Prince was calling for Mountjoy and begging Vidia to recite the titillating story she had told him about the Prussian ambassador for the other man’s amusement, so she drew a deep breath and soldiered on.

Apparently Mountjoy was just drunk enough to ask questions he oughtn’t. “Vidia,” he pronounced, running a gentle hand along her arm. “Brodie may be rich, but he is not as handsome as I—will you throw him over?”

The Prince threw back his head and laughed in appreciation; Mountjoy, poor man, had a face scarred from smallpox. Vidia tapped his hand with her fan, her eyes dancing. “Fie, sir,” she laughed, “where would you keep me—at Craystone?” Mountjoy had famously married his ancient title to a wealthy merchant’s daughter who was known to keep him on a tight leash.

“You could pose as the governess,” insisted Mountjoy. “I would seek a lesson each and every day.”

Again, the Prince laughed with such gusto that he began to choke, and Vidia as well as Mountjoy pounded his back as he gulped brandy. “Impossible,” he gasped after he had recovered. “Brodie is richer than I am, for God’s sake—even Lady Mountjoy cannot compete.”

But Vidia teased, “Perhaps Lady Mountjoy would instead pay me to keep this handsome face away from hers.” She softened the barb by stroking a graceful hand over Mountjoy’s cheek, and he chuckled in appreciation.

“A pox on Brodie—he is driving my people mad,” complained the Prince with ill humor. “Turn him up sweet, Vidia—tell him something to melt that cold heart of his.” Swirling the brandy in his glass, he took another drink.

“He does have a counting-house heart,” she soothed. “I shall do my best, sir.” She began to play with her left earbob—her signal to Brodie that she’d like to leave, but the situation wasn’t urgent. If she played with the right earbob, urgency was indicated.

“Ah, Vidia—if it were me I would do anything you asked of me—give up a hundred fortunes.” Mountjoy had taken her hand and was waxing sentimental as only a man in his cups can do without appearing foolish. “Upon my honor.”

“You are very sweet,” Vidia said with a smile, meeting his yearning gaze with her own amused one. “A trifle well-to-go, but sweet.”

“Drunk as a barrow,” pronounced the Prince in a genial tone. “Be off, Mountjoy—you’ll annoy Brodie and then where shall I be? I shall have to mortgage Windsor Castle.”

As Mountjoy rose to bow, Brodie appeared. The two men exchanged good-natured jibes, and then Brodie leaned over Vidia, his hands on the table. “Shall we go, my dear?”

“Willingly—pending permission from my prince, of course.”

“She is charged with sweetening you up,” announced said prince in a sour tone. “God speed to her.”

But Brodie was prepared to offer an olive branch to the heir to the Crown. “I have spoken to your minister—I need only transfer a few assets and we will rework the bonds to your satisfaction.”

“Excellent,” the other said in surprise, eying him with approval. Then, to Vidia, “You are hereby relieved of your duties.”

“I thank you,” she teased, and dropped a formal curtsey, calculated to expose her impressive cleavage to him.

“Minx.” He smiled and waved a languid hand. “Take her away, Brodie, before I make a fool of myself.”

“Too late,” murmured Brodie as he led Vidia away.

“Hush,” cautioned Vidia, stifling her laughter. “We are not out of the woods, yet.”

“Certainly we are.” Brodie nodded to cronies as they made a slow progress toward the door, his hand at her back. “I am the puppet master.”

“Tell me, puppet master; are you truly going to rework the bonds?”

Brodie shot her a look of disbelief. “Good God, no—but I have managed to delay long enough to keep your people off our necks.” He looked at the room around him with regret. “It is a shame I cannot digress from my plan; a
coterie
with more money and less sense would be hard to find.”

“Behave yourself, Benny—I confess I am weary and wouldn’t be fit to count the cards, anyway.”

There was a line of guests awaiting their carriages on the crowded steps out front, and Brodie’s new outrider from the hotel approached and indicated that if they were agreeable, the coach had been stationed on a side street so that they could walk directly to it. Vidia agreed, hoping the cool evening air would settle her stomach, and with a deferential gesture, the man escorted them along the pavement toward the next street.

Wrapping her pelisse tighter around her, Vidia took a deep breath and felt much better. “Pray do not come early tomorrow,” she suggested to Brodie. “I need to sleep.”

“Sleep, then; you deserve it, after parrying such clumsy advances all evening.”

“I don’t think his heart is in it,” she reflected with a small smile. “It’s only to keep up the reputation from his youth.”

“Fool,” pronounced Brodie, and Vidia cast him a cautionary glance, as the outrider was listening—although they had not named the Prince outright.

As she looked up at Brodie, her slipper slid off a cobblestone and she stumbled forward slightly and clutched at the footman’s arm so as not to fall. “Are you all right, miss?” he turned to ask with concern.

“Quite all right,” she assured him, and wondered why he hadn’t tried to steady her, as would have been natural. Taking a covert glance she saw, to her astonishment, that he held a pistol next to his breeches on the side opposite her. Halting suddenly, she looked back over her shoulder toward the Prince’s residence, her expression chagrined. “I believe I have lost my right earbob,” she said in dismay.

Alert, Brodie replied, “We go back then,” but he stepped slightly away from Vidia and the footman. Disconcerted, the other man hesitated as he tried to decide which to follow and in an instant Vidia’s hands were on the wrist holding the pistol, waiting for his reaction. He instinctively tried to break free by jerking his hand upward, and gauging her moment, she stepped in and brought her knee to his groin with all her strength.

While the man dropped to the ground in agony she wrested his pistol from him and turned her back to Brodie, who had already drawn the sword that was concealed in the hilt of his cane and was reviewing the shadows on the other side of the street. “
Tenga
cuidado
,” he muttered in Spanish. “There will be others.”

“
Retournez
,” she answered in French. “We should go back to the crowd—
rapidmente
.” wary, they began to retrace their steps toward Carlton House, back to back.

“
Saisissez-la
,” called out the man on the ground behind them, gasping. “
Saisissez-la
.”

Alarmed, Vidia saw two men closing in from the shadows. “
Fique
ao
lado
de
mim
,” she warned Brodie in Portuguese as he turned to face them with her, shoulder to shoulder.

“
Si
.” Brodie circled his sword before him in a menacing manner.

“
Reculez
ou
je
tirerai
,” Vidia called to the attackers in French with as much menace as she could muster, threatening to shoot. The two hesitated as she brandished their comrade’s pistol as well as her own, but urged on by the original attacker they warily began to separate and surround Vidia and Brodie so as to force her to choose a target.

Time to cause a ruckus, she decided, and drew a bead on one of the elaborate windows that lined the Prince Regent’s residence. She fired, the discharge creating a very satisfying crack that was immediately followed by a horrendous noise as the huge window came crashing down on the stone pavement. Glass flew around them as the startled men retreated in disarray, and alarmed voices could be heard coming from the Prince’s residence. Vidia deftly tossed the man’s pistol to the pavement in the direction of their fleeing attackers and said to Brodie, “How do we play this?”

Brodie’s voice was grim. “We make a scene.”

A group of gentlemen and footmen quickly approached, their surprised voices raised in inquiry as they surveyed the broken glass.

“An
outrage
!” Brodie shouted, incensed and purple of face. “After them!” He pointed in the direction the attackers had taken and several pursuers took off running, although Vidia felt there was little chance of catching them. Amidst exclamations of shock and dismay, they were escorted back to the entry—Brodie loudly decrying a country where even a visit to the Prince’s residence was fraught with peril. Those who surrounded them agreed with this sentiment in murmuring voices, and Vidia suddenly stilled as she recognized one of those voices. As she stood in shocked surprise, one of the younger guests with whom she was not familiar stepped forward to offer his handkerchief to her, explaining that her arm was cut and bleeding.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, and saw that this was so. She was not worried—Maisie was a wizard at removing bloodstains from dress gowns—but she found she had a sudden and intense interest in removing herself from the scene. The young gentleman held his handkerchief to her arm, then offered in a gallant manner, “You are safe now, miss—allow me to escort you away from this place.”

“I will do the escorting, you puppy—begone.” Brodie made a show of being annoyed and grasped Vidia’s other arm, but her rescuer was not going to relinquish such a chance and explained angrily that he was tending to Vidia’s wound.

While the two men exchanged unfriendly barbs, Vidia sank down on the marble steps and pronounced, “I feel a bit faint,” in her best imitation of a helpless maiden. Brodie and the other man immediately ceased all hostilities, Brodie calling for water and the young man fanning her with his beaver hat.

The Prince materialized by her side and directed that Vidia be taken inside so that he could call his physicians, but she demurred, insisting that she had recovered and would rather go home. The Prince then called for one of his own carriages and in no time at all Vidia was safely within its luxurious confines, rattling over the cobblestones toward Belgrave Square with Brodie beside her.

“Do you need to be stitched?” he asked, lifting the handkerchief to review her cut dispassionately.

“I think not—a binding tape should do,” said Vidia, who had dressed many a scar. “Our attackers may have some cuts, though, which would make it easier to identify them.”

“We may not wish to identify them. I imagine it was your people, trying to make you doubt me.”

“Yes,” she agreed reluctantly. “I think you have the right of it—yet another trap.”
Saisissez-la
, the man had ordered—seize
her
. Since Brodie was not their target, it could be presumed the contretemps was designed to make her think Brodie—or even Rochon—was willing to remove her from the scene so as not to jeopardize their plan. Out of fear for her life, she would then presumably repent of her many sins and ask for protection from the grey-eyed spymaster.

Brodie seemed to find it amusing. “They think you are the weak link.”

Despite everything, she had to chuckle. “How annoying for them—I never behave as I ought.”

“I could have warned them of that,” Brodie replied with good humor.

Vidia sat in her chambers, her pistol on the dressing table, debating whether to wake Maisie. She knew from long experience that it was important to tend a cut immediately so as to avoid a scar, but she was expecting a visitor and besides, she wasn’t in the mood to have to explain what had happened—not until she had straightened out the story in her mind. Brodie had the right of it, but she hadn’t been willing to tell him that the reason she knew that it was her compatriots who had set up the abduction attempt was because she had heard Carstairs’s voice in the throng, quietly urging the young man to see to her wound. He must have been disguised as a servant, and she was surprised she hadn’t spotted him; she had recognized his voice, though—even though it was only one of many. You are a hopeless case, she thought, picking at the lace on her best dressing gown. You should call Maisie, bar the door, pull on a plain cotton nightdress, and go to bed.

Instead she waited, clad in her lace dressing gown and practicing with a deck of cards—she hadn’t played in a few days and it was important to keep her hands dexterous. She did not doubt that Carstairs would make an appearance, and did not doubt that he would make his way undetected past the Frenchman stationed outside and the additional guard Brodie had posted this evening.

Her patience was rewarded when she heard a tapping on her chamber door even though she had left it ajar. He didn’t want to frighten her, she thought with irony. It was a bit late for such concerns.

“Come in,” she said, and turned to hold her pistol on him.

Raising his hands, he stood still. “I am unarmed.”

She made a derisive sound and he amended, “I am armed but I shall not draw.”

As he stepped into the room they regarded each other; he was dressed in dark clothes from head to foot—the only contrast coming from the candlelight’s exposure of his intense blue eyes. She thought about those eyes and did not invite him to sit.

“I wanted to see that you are recovered.”

“As you see.” Her tone was mild, her pistol unwavering.

He hesitated. “You were unwell, I think.”

Deus
, if he only knew. She smiled. “Only a feint, to stop a quarrel.”

“Ah.”

She waited.

His gaze traveled to the cut on her arm. “Do you need a stitch or two?”

“No,” she replied in an exasperated tone. “And everyone should quit asking.”

“Then where is the binding tape?”

Weighing her options, she relented and placed her pistol on the table, produced the tape, and allowed him to draw up a chair and reposition the candle so that he could see better. He examined the cut on her upper arm and met her eyes. “I sew a fine seam.”

“Not on me, you don’t,” she retorted. “Apply the tape and begone.”

He did, asking her to hold one end in place while he carefully wrapped the tape around her arm, his head bent close to her own. “I am sorry for this.”

“Are you?” She made no effort to keep the bitter edge from her voice.

His eyes met hers, and she wondered, unbidden, whether the child would have his eyes. He insisted, “I am indeed sorry. And I am here out of coverage.”

Watching him, she decided that perhaps this was the truth. “Do you believe me tainted?”

He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know what I believe.”

Chiding him, she said, “I thought you agreed to give me warning before I was clapped in irons.”

“No,” he corrected her softly, his gaze on hers. “I never agreed.”

Struggling to control herself, she accused, “Yes—you asked me to come to you if I needed help.”

“You have not come to me,” he pointed out.

Dropping her head, she felt a sudden and surprising inclination to cry. She hadn’t cried in many years—not even when Rochon’s man held his knife to her face, discussing which of her beautiful eyes he should remove first.

“It is a damnable situation,” Carstairs said in the same soft tone. “Shall we set it aside for an hour and agree not to speak of it?”

“I suppose we can try,” she agreed, calming herself. I should tell him about the baby, she thought, but could not bring herself to do it—not in this vulnerable state, so uncharacteristic of her. Instead she asked, “Would you like to play cards?”

“I would,” he promptly responded. “I watched you at the club—you are a very good cheat.”

It was a sincere compliment. “Thank you,” she said, and began to deal.

He pulled his chair closer. “Are we playing for points or money?”

“Points,” she decided, sorting the cards with a flick of her wrist. “Then I won’t be tempted to cheat.”

With a smile, he gathered up his hand. “Every now and then,” he mused, arranging his cards before making a discard, “I get a glimpse of what lies beneath that façade.”

“My snail shell,” she replied, unperturbed.

His lips curved in amusement. “There; it happened again.”

She pounced on his discard. “On the other hand, I am not certain I have ever been given such a glimpse.”

His gaze flicked up to meet hers. “You have—you were perhaps unaware.” She knew he referred to their night together and as these were dangerous waters, she made no reply.

As they continued to play, he observed, “One becomes cynical in this business; in the end it permeates every aspect—even the personal.”

She turned over her cards to show she had won the hand. “But trust is always an issue, whether in business or the personal—wouldn’t you agree?”

He gathered up the cards to redeal while she marked the points. They were very evenly matched, she decided, and tried to control that yearning feeling that always seemed to rise up within her when she was in his company.

Thoroughly shuffling the cards, he offered, “I agree—but that is not what I meant. We are trained not to trust anyone in order to survive, but it creates such a disadvantage—it poisons the atmosphere so that we are unwilling to take a chance on trust.” He met her eyes. “Even when it means we forfeit a chance at happiness.”

“Do you think it possible to trust another person to such an extent?” She was genuinely curious. “And how would one know, in any event?”

“True—we have seen so much duplicity. And it is against our natures, you and me, to be made vulnerable.”

She nodded, pausing to finger the cards in her hand and thinking him very astute. “So the manner in which we live our lives has taught us that reposing trust in another person is not only foolish, but dangerous.”

“It is a shame,” he agreed, taking her discard. “I wonder if we could change our natures.”

“You had a wife,” she reminded him. It seemed an opportune time to make the reminder; she could practically feel the heat emanating from him across the table.

“I did,” he agreed, and did not elaborate.

She decided that for the briefest instant she had seen beneath his façade and wanted to follow up. “Do you miss her?” The question was sincere—she had always had the impression they were a devoted couple but his willingness to pursue her—and so soon after Marie’s death—didn’t mesh with that impression.

Studying his hand, he chose his words with care. “Marriage is not always easy; even the most compatible couple may not have a smooth road at all times. It is hard to explain to someone who observes it only from the outside.”

“You mistake the matter,” she said calmly. “I am widowed, myself.”

His gaze flew to hers, startled, and there was a pause. “I did not know—I am sorry.”

Watching his reaction carefully, she decided his surprise was genuine. Interesting, she thought—he was not in their spymaster’s confidence.

Carstairs’s eyes still rested upon her, assessing this revelation. “How did he die?”

“On the Peninsula—during the war.” With a monumental effort she forced herself to relax and curtailed any more questions by asking her own. “How long were you married?”

“Six years,” he said. “And you?”

“Nearly two.” Realizing she had bitten off the syllable, she tried to make up for her lapse of composure. “A very tumultuous time.”

He nodded slowly. “I can well imagine. Will you wed again?”

“No,” she answered without hesitation, drawing a card. “You?”

With gentle amusement he replied, “I regret to say it appears not.”

She glanced up in surprise and met his gaze, fixed upon hers with teasing warmth. Smiling and shaking her head, she tried to control those butterflies again. “Come now, Lucien—if we were wed we would be afraid to swallow our breakfast tea and would be forced to sleep with one eye open.”

“There wouldn’t be much sleeping,” he corrected her, “and therefore even if you poisoned my breakfast tea, I would die a happy man.”

Dangerous waters, she reminded herself. Don’t start thinking about being abed with him—too much is at stake.

But he had no such qualms as he reached over to take her hands in his, the cards falling to the table. “Allow me to demonstrate,” he said softly, pulling her up with him as he stood and brought his mouth down to hers. I shouldn’t, she thought—I have no idea if he means a word he says. But almost against her will, her mouth softened beneath his as he kissed her gently and began to untie the ribbons on her dressing gown.

“Vidia,” he whispered, his mouth moving to her throat. “Sweetheart—I have wanted this ever since that first night.”

Ah yes—that first night, she thought as her hands came up to caress his shoulders. I’ve already paid the price—there seems little point in holding him at arm’s length at this late date.

The dressing gown fell to the floor as he lifted her in his arms to carry her to the bed, his head bent to hers as he traced his mouth across her cheeks. Laying her into the luxurious featherbed, he followed her down and lay atop her, shrugging out of his coat in between kisses.

“Aren’t you going to take off your boots?” she whispered in bemusement.

He did not pause in his endeavors, but confessed, “I am afraid if I give you a moment to think, you will change your mind.” He rested with his forearms on either side of her head and moved his mouth to her throat.

Placing a hand on his cheek, she chuckled. “I won’t change my mind—may as well be comfortable.”

Lifting himself off her, he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots as she knelt on the bed and embraced him from behind, nuzzling the nape of his neck and reaching around to unbutton his shirt buttons.

He seized her hands and kissed them, one at a time, then stood to peel off his shirt and breeches. Her hands tracing his ribs, she said, “You will have to tell me of your scars, sometime.”

“Not now,” he muttered, his need urgent as he lifted her nightdress over her head. His warm hands slid down the sides of her breasts, her waist, her hips. “You are so beautiful—and I don’t care how many times you’ve heard it before.”

Murmuring into his mouth she replied, “Then tell me again.”