London, 1814
Shadows sculpted his sharp profile as he watched the crowded ballroom from the dim, high balcony; in the oscillating glow of the draft-buffeted wall candle, he seemed to flicker in and out of materiality like some tall, elegant phantom. Its shifting radiance glimmered over his raven-black hair and caught the Machiavellian glint of cunning in his quicksilver-colored eyes. Patience. Everything was in order.
Preparation was all, and he had been meticulous. With a musing expression, Lord Lucien Knight lifted his crystal goblet of burgundy to his lips, pausing to inhale its mellow bouquet before he drank. He did not yet know his enemies’ names or faces, but he could feel them inching closer like so many jackals. No matter. He was ready. He had laid his trap and baited it well, with all manner of sin and sex and the siren’s whisper of subversive political activity that no spy could resist.
There was nothing left to do now but watch and wait.
Twenty years of war had ceased this past spring with Napoleon’s defeat, abdication, and exile to the Mediterranean island of Elba. It was autumn now, and the leaders of Europe had gathered in Vienna to draw up the peace accord; but any man with half a brain could see that until Bonaparte was moved to a more secure location farther out in the Atlantic, Lucien thought dryly, the war was not necessarily over. Elba was but a stone’s throw from the Italian mainland, and there were those who opposed the peace—who saw no profit for themselves in the Bourbon King Louis XVIII’s return to the throne of France and who wanted Napoleon back. As one of the British Crown’s most skilled secret agents, Lucien had orders from the foreign secretary, Viscount Castlereagh, to stand as the watcher at the gate, as it were, until the peace had been ratified—his mission, to stop these shadowy powers from stirring up trouble on English soil.
He took another sip of his wine, his silvery eyes gleaming with mayhem. Let them come. When they did, he would find them, snare them, catch and destroy them, just as he had so many others. Indeed, he would make them come to him.
Suddenly, a round of cheers broke out in the ballroom below and rippled through the crowd. Well, well, the conquering hero. Lucien leaned forward and rested his elbows on the railing of the balcony, watching with a cynical smirk as his identical twin brother, Colonel Lord Damien Knight, marched into the assembly rooms, resplendent in his scarlet uniform with the stern, high dignity of the Archangel Michael just back from slaying the dragon. The glitter of his dress sword and gold epaulets seemed to throw off a shining halo around him, but the famed colonel’s unsmiling demeanor did not discourage the swarm of smitten women, eager aides-de-camp, junior officers, and assorted hero-worshiping toadies who instantly surrounded him. Damien had always been the favorite of the gods.
Lucien shook his head to himself. Though his lips curved in wry amusement, pain flickered behind his haughty stare. If it weren’t enough that the colonel had captured the popular imagination with his gallant exploits in battle, as the elder twin, Damien would soon be made an earl by a rather convoluted accident of lineage. It was not jealousy that stung Lucien, however, but an almost childlike sense of having been abandoned by his staunchest ally. Damien was the only person who had ever really understood him. For most of their thirty-one years, the Knight twins had been inseparable. In their rakish youth, their friends had dubbed them Lucifer and Demon, while the alarmed mothers of Society debutantes had warned their daughters about “that pair of devils.” But those carefree days of laughter and camaraderie were gone, for Lucien had transgressed his brother’s soldierly code.
Damien had never quite accepted Lucien’s decision to leave the army a little over two years ago for the secret service branch of the Diplomatic Corps. Officers of the line, as a rule, deemed espionage dishonorable, ungentlemanly. To Damien and his ilk, spies were no better than snakes. Damien was a born warrior, to be sure. Anyone who had ever seen him in battle, his face streaked with black powder and blood, knew there was no question of that. But there would not have been quite so many victories without the constant stream of intelligence that Lucien had sent him—against regulation, at the risk of his life—on the enemy’s position, strength, numbers, and likeliest plan of attack. How it surely chafed the great commander’s pride to know that the fullness of his glory would not have been possible without his spy brother’s help.
No matter, Lucien thought cynically. He still knew better than anyone how to prick the war hero’s titanic ego.
“Lucien!” a breathy voice suddenly called from behind him.
He turned around and saw Caro’s voluptuous silhouette framed in the doorway. “Why, my dear Lady Glenwood,” he purred, holding out his hand to her with a dark smile. Wasn’t Damien going to be cross about this?
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Her doll-like side curls swung against her rouged cheeks as she flounced over to him in a rustle of black satin. She smiled slyly, revealing the fetching little gap between her two front teeth as she took his hand and let him pull her up close against his body. “Damien’s here—”
“Who?” he murmured, skimming her lips with his own.
She groaned softly under his kiss and melted against him, the black satin of her gown sliding sensually against the white brocade of his formal waistcoat. Last night it had been skin to skin.
Though the twenty-seven-year-old baroness wore mourning for her late husband, Lucien doubted she had shed a tear. A husband, to a woman like Caro, was merely an impediment to her pursuit of pleasure. Her ebony gown had a tiny bodice that barely contained her burgeoning cleavage. The midnight fabric made her skin look like alabaster, while her crimson lips matched the roses that adorned her upswept, chocolate-brown hair. After a moment, Caro made an effort to end their kiss, bracing her gloved hands on his chest.
When she pulled back slightly, he saw that she was gloating, her cheeks flushed, her raisin-dark eyes glowing with amorous triumph. Lucien masked his insolent smile as Caro coyly lowered her lashes and stroked the lapels of his formal black tailcoat. To be sure, she believed she had done the impossible, what none of her rivals had ever achieved—that she alone had snared both Knight twins as her conquests and could now play them off each other for her own vanity. Alas, the lady had a large surprise in store.
He was a bad man, he knew, but he could not resist toying with her a bit. He licked his lips as he stared at her, then glanced suggestively at the nearby wall, cloaked in shadows. “No one can see us up here, my love. Are you game?”
She let out one of her throaty laughs. “You wicked devil, I’ll give you more later. Right now I want us to go see Damien.”
Lucien lifted one eyebrow, playing along with consummate skill. “Together?”
“Yes. I don’t want him to think we have anything to hide.” She gave him a crafty glance from beneath her lashes and smoothed his white silk cravat. “We must act naturally.”
“I’ll try, ma chérie,” he murmured.
“Good. Now, come.” She slipped her gloved hand through the crook of his elbow and propelled him toward the small spiral staircase that led down to the ballroom. He went along amiably, which ought to have warned her that he was up to something. “You swear you didn’t tell him?”
“Mon ange, I would never say a word.” He did not see fit to add that such was the bond between identical twins that they hardly required words for the exchange of information. A glance, a laugh, a look spoke volumes. Appalling, really, to think that this wanton little schemer, for all her beauty, was on the verge of snaring Damien in marriage. Lucky for the war hero, his snake of a spy brother had come to his rescue again with the crucial information: Caro had not passed the test.
Lucien bent his head near her ear. “I trust you are still coming with me to Revell Court this weekend?”
She slipped him a nervous glance. “Actually, darling, I’m . . . not sure.”
“What?” He stopped and turned to her with a scowl. “Why not? I want you there.”
Her lips parted slightly, and she looked like she might climax on the spot in response to his demand. “Lucien.”
“Caro,” he retorted. It was hardly a lover’s devotion that inspired his insistence, but the simple fact that a beautiful woman was a useful thing to have on hand when trying to catch enemy spies.
“You don’t understand!” she said with a pout. “I want to go. It’s just that I received a letter today from Goody Two-Shoes. She said—”
“From whom?” he demanded, cutting her off with a dubious look. If he recalled correctly, it was a character in a classic children’s story by Oliver Goldsmith.
“Alice, my sister-in-law,” she said, waving off the name in irritation. “I may have to go home to Glenwood Park. She says my baby might be getting sick. If I don’t go home and help take care of Harry, Alice will have my head. Not that I know what to do with the little creature.” She sniffed. “All he does for me is scream.”
“Well, he’s got a nurse, hasn’t he?” he asked in disgust. He knew that Caro had a three-year-old son by her late husband, though most of the time she seemed to forget the fact. The child was one of the reasons why Damien was so interested in marrying the woman. Aside from some bizarre fatherly impulse toward a child he had never even seen, Damien wanted a wife with a proven ability to bear him sons. An earl, after all, needed heirs. Unfortunately, Caro had not proved worthy, surrendering wholeheartedly to Lucien’s seduction. Damien was going to fume at the blow to his pride, but Lucien refused to allow his brother to marry any woman who did not love him to distraction. Any woman worthy of Damien would have refused Lucien’s silken trap.
“Of course he has a nurse, but Alice says he needs, well . . . me,” Caro said in dismay.
“But I need you, chérie.” He slipped her a coaxing little smile, wondering if his own late mother had occasionally suffered similar pangs of conscience. What a piece of work she had been, the scandalous duchess of Hawkscliffe, making conquests of half the men she met. Indeed, the twins’ own father had not been their mother’s husband, but her devoted lover of many years, the powerful and mysterious marquess of Carnarthen. The marquess had died recently, leaving Lucien the bulk of his fortune and his infamous villa, Revell Court, situated a dozen miles southwest of Bath.
As Lucien stared at Caro, he realized why he felt so strongly about stopping Damien from marrying her. He could hardly let his brother end up with a wife who was just like their mother. Turning away abruptly, he began walking down the hallway, leaving Caro where she stood. “Never mind, woman. Go home to your brat,” he muttered. “I’ll find someone else to amuse me.”
“But, Lucien, I want to come!” she protested, hurrying to catch up in a rustle of satin.
He stared straight ahead as he stalked down the hallway. “Your boy needs you and you know it.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Her tone was so bleak that Lucien looked askance at her. “He doesn’t even know me. He only loves Alice.”
“Is that what you think?”
“It’s the truth. I am an incompetent mother.”
He shook his head with a vexed sigh. What was it to him if she wanted to lie to herself? “Come along, then. Damien is waiting.” Tucking her hand in the crook of his arm, he led her to the ballroom to face her fate.
Under the bright glow of the balloon-cut chandeliers, the ballroom looked like a civilized place to those who did not know better; but to Lucien, not for nothing was the marble floor laid out in black and white squares like a giant chessboard. Carefully watching the crowd from behind the facade of the decadent, self-indulged persona he had created, he kept all his senses sharply attuned, on the lookout for anyone or anything that set his instincts jangling. Nothing was ever obvious, which was why he had cultivated an enlightened paranoia and trusted no one. In his experience, it was the most average, ordinary-looking people who harbored the most dangerous treacheries. The strange characters were usually harmless; indeed, he had a fondness for all creatures who refused to be crushed by the iron mold of conformity. This preference was borne out in his acquaintance as, here and there, disreputable persons, odd fellows, outsiders, assorted voluptuaries, rebels, disheveled scientific geniuses from the Royal Society, and freakish eccentrics of every stripe nodded to him, furtively offering their respects.
Ah, his minions were eager to return to Revell Court for the festivities, he thought in jaded amusement, accepting their subtle homage with a narrow smile. He cast a wink to a painted lady who greeted him from behind her spread fan.
“Your Unholiness,” she whispered, giving him a come-hither look.
He bowed his head. “Bon soir, madame.” From the corner of his eye, he noticed Caro staring at him in fascination, her lips slightly parted. “What is it, my dear?”
She glanced at the velvet-clad scoundrels who bowed to him, then met his gaze with a sly look. “I was just wondering how Miss Goody Two-Shoes would fare with you around. It would be such fun to watch you corrupt her.”
“Drop her by sometime. I’ll do my best.”
She smirked. “She’d probably faint if you even looked at her, the little prude.”
“Young?”
“Not very. She’s twenty-one.” Caro paused. “Actually, I doubt that even you could scale her ivory tower, if you take my meaning.”
He frowned askance at her. “Please.”
Caro shrugged, a mocking smile tugging at her lips. “I don’t know, Lucien. It wouldn’t be easy. Alice is as good as you are bad.”
He lifted his eyebrow and dwelled on this for a moment, then pursued the matter, his curiosity piqued. “Is she really such a paragon?”
“Ugh, she turns my stomach,” Caro replied under her breath, nodding to people here and there as they ambled through the crowd. “She won’t gossip. She doesn’t lie. She doesn’t laugh when I make a perfectly witty remark about some woman’s ridiculous dress. She cannot be induced to vanity. She never even misses church!”
“My God, you have my sympathies for having to live with such a monster. What did you say her name was again?” he asked mildly.
“Alice.”
“Montague?”
“Yes. She’s my poor Glenwood’s little sister.”
“Alice Montague,” he echoed in a musing tone. A baron’s daughter, he thought. Virtuous. Available. Good with the brat. Sounded like a perfect candidate for Damien’s bride. “Is she fair?”
“Tolerable,” Caro said flatly, avoiding his gaze.
“Mm-hmm.” He passed a scrutinizing glance over her face, and his eyes began to dance at the jealousy stamped on the baroness’s fine features. “How tolerable, exactly?”
She gave him a quelling look and refused to answer.
“Come, tell me.”
“Forget about her!”
“I’m only curious. What color are her eyes?”
She ignored him, nodding to a lady in a feathered turban.
“Oh, Caro,” he murmured playfully. “Are you jealous of little luscious twenty-one?”
“Don’t be absurd!”
“Then where’s the harm?” he insisted, goading her. “Tell me what color Alice’s eyes are.”
“Blue,” she snapped, “but they are lackluster.”
“And her hair?”
“Blond. Red. I don’t know. What does it signify?”
“Indulge me.”
“You are an utter pest! Alice’s hair is her crowning glory, if you must know. It hangs to her waist, and I suppose you call the color of it strawberry blond,” she said peevishly, “but it is always filled with the crumbs of whatever kind of muffin the baby ate for breakfast. Quite disgusting. I have told her a hundred times that long, cascading Rapunzel hair is entirely out of fashion, but Alice ignores me. She likes it. Now are you satisfied?”
“She sounds delicious,” Lucien whispered in her ear. “Might I bring her to Revell Court instead of you?”
Caro pulled back and smacked him with her black lace fan.
Lucien was still laughing at her ire as they sauntered into the knot of red-coated soldiers. “Ah, look, Lady Glenwood,” he said in bright irony. “It is my dear brother. Evening, Demon. I’ve brought someone to see you.” Sliding his hands into the pockets of his black trousers, he rocked idly on his heels, a cynical smile sporting at his lips as he waited to watch the show unfold.
Damien’s fellow officers looked disparagingly at Lucien, muttered farewells to their colonel, and predictably walked away, lest their honor be tainted by contagion, he thought dryly. With a war-hardened visage and lionlike decorum, Damien pressed away from the wide pillar where he had been leaning and gave Caro a stiff bow.
“Lady Glenwood. It is a pleasure to see you again,” he clipped out in a low, brusque monotone. Damien’s manner was so grave that he might have been laying out battle plans for his captains instead of greeting the damsel of his choice, Lucien thought. Indeed, after serving in nearly every major action in the war, Damien had come home with a deadened, icy look in his eyes that rather worried Lucien, but there was nothing he could do to help when his brother would barely talk to him.
“I trust you find the evening’s entertainments to your liking, my lady,” he said gravely to the baroness.
Caro smiled at him in an odd mix of patience and lust, while Lucien suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at his brother’s tense formality. Damien could lop off an enemy’s head with one blow of his sword, but put him in the vicinity of a beautiful woman, and the steely-eyed colonel turned as shy and uncertain as an overgrown schoolboy. The ladies of the ton were such sugar-spun confections that he seemed to fear that if he touched them he might break them. The hardy lasses who worked St. James’s Park at night put the war hero much more at ease.
Ah, well, Lucien thought, shaking his head to himself, it was comforting to know that his exalted brother had his foibles. He looked on in amusement as Damien cast about haphazardly for something to say and suddenly seized on a topic.
“How’s Harry?”
Lucien shut his eyes briefly and pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation at his brother’s dim-wittedness with the opposite sex. Could he have made it any more obvious that he only wanted a highborn broodmare? No pretty compliments, no requests for a dance. It was a wonder women bothered with the great brute at all.
Even Caro looked uneasy with his choice of subjects, as though to admit that she had borne a child was to admit she was beyond the first blush of her youth. She glossed over her reply, not bothering to mention the boy’s illness, then quickly steered the conversation to other matters. Watching them, Lucien could tell that it cost his brother an intense effort to pay attention to Caro’s empty prattle.
“What a monstrous dull Little Season, don’t you think? All the best society has gone home to the country for the hunt, or to Paris or Vienna—”
Bored in seconds, Lucien suddenly slipped his hand around Caro’s waist and yanked her to him. “What do you think of this pretty wench, eh, Demon?”
She fell against his chest with a coy squeal. “Lucien!”
“Does she not tempt you? I find she tempts me quite to the breaking point,” he murmured meaningfully, tracing the curve of her side with a slow, wicked caress.
Damien looked at him in shock. What the hell are you doing? his scowl demanded, but perhaps he sensed the note of deviltry in his twin’s smooth voice, for he delayed judgment for a moment, regarding Lucien warily. He knew better than anyone that with Lucien, things were never as they seemed.
“Doesn’t she look ravishing this evening? You should tell her so.”
Damien glanced at Caro, then at him. “Indeed.” The single, ominous word rumbled like far-off thunder from the depths of his chest. He studied the woman, as though trying to penetrate her nervous, sugary smile, for he had not been born with Lucien’s gift of seeing past pretense in a glance.
“Let go of me, Lucien. People are staring,” Caro murmured uneasily, brushing her shoulder against his chest as she tried to squirm free.
“What’s wrong, mon ange? You only want my touch in secret?” he asked, his tone silky-smooth, though his grip on her body tightened ruthlessly.
She froze and stared at him in shock, her brown eyes looking even darker as her face turned white.
“Time to confess, love. You’ve been trying to manipulate me and my brother, but it’s not going to work. Tell Damien where you were last night.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she forced out.
With a look that could have turned her to a pillar of ice, Damien cursed under his breath and turned away. Lucien laughed softly and allowed Caro to shove free of his embrace.
“Damien, don’t listen to him—you know he is a liar!”
“You would bat your lashes at me after you’ve lain with my brother?” he whispered fiercely shoving off her clutching hands.
“But, I—it’s not my fault, it’s his!”
“You are brazen, madam. Moreover, you are a fool.”
She whirled to Lucien with a frantic look. “Did you hear what he called me? You can’t let him speak to me like that!”
But Lucien’s only answer was a small, rather sinister laugh. He took another drink of his wine.
“What is going on here?” she demanded in a shaky voice.
“Caro, my heart, the man’s not a fool. There is something I neglected to tell you last night. Damien has been meaning to propose to you.”
Her jaw dropped. For a moment, she looked as though she couldn’t draw in a breath past the tight stays that pressed up the splendid globes of her breasts; then her stricken gaze flew to Damien’s. “Is this true?”
“I am sure there is no need to discuss it,” he growled.
“Is it?” she cried.
“I merely thought it would be helpful to give your child a father, since he lost his own.” Damien’s frosty glance swept her body, lingering at her hips. “Pity you are unable to temper your wantonness with a little discipline.” His angry gaze swung to Lucien. “A word with you, sir.”
“As you wish, brother.”
“Lucien—you can’t leave me!” She clutched at his arm quite without shame.
“Caro, my pet.” He lifted her hand and kissed it, then let it trail from his grasp as he moved away from her. “He’s right. I’m afraid you failed the test.”
“Test?” Understanding flashed in her eyes, then rage. “You fiend! Bastard! Both of you! That’s what you are! A pair of bastards!”
“Why, everyone knows that, ma chérie,” Lucien said with smile. “Our mother was an even greater slut than you.”
With a wordless cry of fury, Caro hurled her empty wineglass at him, but he caught it out of the air with catlike reflexes, placed it gently on the tray of a passing waiter, and blew her a kiss from his white-gloved hand. Offering her a smooth, mocking bow, he turned and followed his brother out of the ballroom.
Despite their estrangement, the Knight twins fell naturally in stride with each other as they crossed the adjoining lounge and descended the grand staircase to the ground floor. People stared as they passed, but the twins were used to that reaction. They passed several of the luxuriously appointed *******ment salons, coming at last to the billiard room tucked away in the corner. When they stepped into this dim, oak-paneled male sanctuary, Damien cleared the room with a glower. Lucien held the door sardonically for the gentlemen who put out their cigars and hastened out, leaving a miasmic cloud of smoke drifting over the three pool tables.
Nodding to the last man to leave, Lucien glanced out the door and saw that Caro had followed them as far as the hallway. It seemed she didn’t dare come any closer. Her gloved fists were clenched at her sides. Her dark eyes snapped sparks. She pursed her red lips like she was trying not to scream obscenities at him. He laughed under his breath and shut the door more or less in her face. The most amusing thing about Lady Glenwood was that when he was done here, he had no doubt he could go back out and smooth things over with a few soft words and bring her to his villa for the party this weekend, just as they had previously planned—sick child or no. Caro was determined, after all, to find out if his gatherings at Revell Court were every bit as wicked as she had heard.
Turning, he found Damien studying him, his shiny Hessian boots planted wide, his arms folded across his chest. The formidable colonel stroked his chin with a brooding air. On his guard, Lucien sauntered over to the nearest pool table, reaching across its green velvet surface to toy with the glossy black eight ball. He spun it like a top and watched it whirl under his white-gloved fingertip, like God in a sadistic mood, toying with the earth. Where shall I send a famine, a plague?
“Didn’t we make a pact once never to let a woman come between us?” Damien asked.
“Why, yes, on our eighteenth birthday. I remember it well.”
“Do you?”
Damien waited for an explanation; Lucien let him wait.
“Well?”
“Well, what?” He looked innocently at his brother. “Oh, come, you can’t be serious.”
“You’re damned right I’m serious!”
Damien’s roars could make whole regiments quake in their boots, but Lucien merely sent him a long-suffering, rather bored look. “I cannot apologize when I am not sorry.”
Damien’s eyes narrowed to steel-gray slits. “Sometimes I think you are an evil man.”
Lucien laughed mildly.
“What kind of game are you playing now?” He took a step closer. “You’re up to something, and I want to know what it is. Give me a plain answer for once or I’ll flatten you. Damn it, Lucien, if you weren’t my brother, I would kill you for this.”
“Over Caro Montague?” he asked dubiously.
“You deliberately humiliated me.”
“I saved you from humiliation. You should be thanking me,” he retorted. “Now at least you know what your angel is made of. Jesus, I was trying to do you a favor.”
Damien snorted. “Admit it. You seduced Caro to get back at me. To even the score.”
Lucien paused, cast him a veiled look of warning. “Score?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. The title.”
“I don’t want your bloody title.” Lucien’s eyes flickered with gathering fire, but Damien ignored his words and charged on.
“You have no reason to resent me. Your fortunes are set now since Carnarthen left you the unentailed property. Frankly, I don’t fancy living on half pay for the rest of my days. I am accepting this earldom, and you’re just going to have to learn to live with it. Incidentally . . .” When he stopped mere inches from Lucien and stared coolly at him, it was like looking into a hostile mirror—the same black hair, the same haunted gray eyes. Both men were too hard and proud to admit that in their own separate ways, each had been left shattered by his experience of war.
“Yes?” Lucien asked prosaically.
“I hope you don’t plan on seducing every woman I take an interest in, because I won’t brush off an insult like this twice. Not even from you.”
For a long moment, Lucien stared at him, incredulous. “Did you just threaten me?”
Damien held his stare in granite stillness. Stunned, Lucien turned away in amazement. He ran his hand through his hair for a moment, at a loss, then began laughing, low and bitterly. “You glory-hound! I should have let you marry the slut and watched her cuckold you all over Town. Are we through here?”
Damien shrugged.
“Good.” With a lightninglike movement, Lucien rolled the eight ball at the other billiard balls. It struck them with a savage crack and sent them scattering, pell-mell, over the table, colored and striped, some crashing down into the pockets. He pivoted and stalked toward the door.
How fitting, that this was what his life had come to, he thought acidly as he crossed the billiard room. For the past two and a half years, he had worked alone, changing identities like a shape-shifter each time he had moved on to a new assignment, drifting in and out of countless people’s lives like a ghost, never quite connecting. Now not even his twin brother knew him anymore—did not know him and did not want to know him, for he was a spy, a deceiver, a man without honor. A man who knew the rules of gentlemanly conduct and ignored them. Self-loathing pulsed through him, and despair. If Damien did not give a damn about him anymore, who ever would? No one, he realized, with an empty, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was utterly alone.
“One more thing,” Damien called after him.
Lucien turned in formidable, elegant hauteur. “Yes?”
Damien lifted his chin. “I’ve been hearing odd rumors about you. Bizarre things.”
“Do tell.”
“People are saying you’ve resurrected our father’s old secret society. There is talk of . . . indecent goings-on at Revell Court. Strange rites.”
“You don’t say,” he uttered blandly.
Damien searched his face. “Most people seem to think you’re merely having wild parties, but a few claim you’re involved in some kind of . . . pagan cult, along the lines of the old Hellfire Club.”
“How very interesting,” he purred.
“Is it true?”
Lucien merely slipped him a dark, jaded smile, turned, and strolled out of the room.
Morning sunlight gilded the Hampshire countryside with the mellow glow of autumn and streamed through the French windows of the cozy parlor at Glenwood Park. Alice Montague picked a crumb of Harry’s breakfast muffin out of her hair with a slight frown and went on singing softly to the toddler, rocking him in her arms. She glanced restlessly out the bow window each time she paced across the room, for she expected Caro’s carriage any minute now. At least she hoped.
All week Harry had been uncharacteristically whiny and tired. Yesterday he had fallen asleep on the parlor floor with his thumb in his mouth and his blanket wrapped around him, while Alice had sat intently sewing a new suit for the dashing Mr. Wembley, Harry’s jointed wooden doll. This morning at dawn, however, his old nurse’s warnings had proved correct. The diminutive Baron Glenwood had awakened the entire household with a wail of lordly ire—one fevered, angry, miserable little boy, covered in chicken pox.
Having itched and fussed and cried since breakfast, he dozed at last in Alice’s arms with an air of defeat, his rose-petal cheek resting on her shoulder.
“Mama,” he bleated wearily, just as he had been doing all morning.
“She’s coming, my love,” Alice whispered, hugging him. “She’s on her way. I promise.”
“Bumps.”
“Yes, I know you’ve got the bumps, lambkin. Everyone gets them. I had them too when I was your age.” Unfortunately, it was going to get worse before it got better.
“Three.”
“Yes, you are three. Such a clever boy.” She squeezed him gently, ignoring the strain in her back. He was too big for her to be carrying around like an infant; but he reverted to babyish ways when he was sick, and she couldn’t bear to watch him suffer without doing what she could to comfort him.
“Look!” Harry said suddenly, lifting his peach-fuzzed head and pointing over her shoulder at the window.
“What is it?”
“Mama!”
“Can it be?” she asked doubtfully. Walking over to the window, Alice shifted him onto her hip and pushed the damask curtain aside.
Harry pointed his tiny finger in excitement, then looked into her eyes with his first wide smile of the day, showing his little white teeth. To Alice, his smile was like the sun breaking out from behind the clouds. She gazed lovingly into his sky-blue eyes, ignoring the approaching carriage for the moment. When Harry smiled, he looked so much like her brother, Phillip, that it brought tears to her eyes.
“Mama! Mama!” he began shouting, kicking his legs violently as he craned his neck to look at the distant carriage.
“Didn’t I tell you she was coming?” she teased, hiding her relief, for the baroness was not the most dependable creature. Caro had a way of popping in and out of her child’s life as the whim struck her, but Alice had written to her three days ago warning her the boy was coming down with something.
“I go!” Harry squirmed out of her arms and went careening out of the room with small pattering steps, trailing his blanket from his tiny, clenched fist. “Mama! Mama!”
For a moment, Alice listened to her nephew’s hollers trailing down the hallway, and his nurse Peg Tate’s hearty exclamation as the big, sturdy woman intercepted him.
His rambunctious excitement at the prospect of seeing the glamorous stranger, his mother, nearly broke her heart. He wanted so badly to get to know the baroness, but every time Caro visited, she would leave again just when Harry was starting to get used to her. It left the child confused and angry—and played havoc with Alice’s future. She sighed quietly, turned, and took a long look at the bright, airy room where she spent most of her time. Her gaze traveled from the large, intricate cage of white-painted cane that she had fashioned to house her pet canary, to the round table where she idled away the serene country hours of her life at Glenwood Park, absorbed in her various crafts, all very suitable for a quiet-tempered young lady. Yet she couldn’t help but feel she was living in a dream here while life was passing her by.
She was haunted by a hunger for she knew not what, sometimes so intensely that it kept her awake at night. She was torn between her devotion to her nephew and the running of Glenwood Park, and her own need to find her life. But the overriding fact was that Harry needed someone he could depend on to be there for him all the time, not just when the whim struck her. Since it was a duty his mother had abdicated, that person was Alice. She slipped her hands into her apron pockets and stood very still, the sunlight warming her skin, glistening upon her bright, reddish-gold hair. She tensed her body tightly, trying to get rid of the well-hidden tension that plagued her, then forced her shoulders to relax and took deliberate pleasure in gazing upon the vase of dried hydrangeas that she had arranged just yesterday. The flowers graced the center of the table. Beside them lay the elegant silk purses she was sewing as Christmas gifts for a few of her London friends, and her delicate japanning tools, perched well out of Harry’s reach. Her latest piece, an intricate jewel box, sat in a middle stage of completion. All of her hobbies ran in an artistic vein, but in her heart, she knew in a sense they were merely distractions, her way of trying to burn off her restlessness.
Hearing the baroness’s carriage rumble to a halt outside the manor house, Alice moved dutifully to the window to wave hello, but when she looked out, her eyes widened in appalled shock. It was not Caro’s fashionable yellow barouche.
It was the mail coach. She paled and pressed her hand to her mouth, realizing instantly what this meant. A letter. A paltry letter! She isn’t coming. She simply doesn’t care. The realization dazed and then enraged her.
Her dark blue eyes narrowed, and her pale, oval reflection in the window filled with an untapped depth of passionate fury that reached down for fathoms below her placid surface. Overwhelming anger seized her, but very little surprise. She shook her head in silence. No, she thought fiercely. Not this time, Caro. I will not let you do this to that child. This is the last straw.
She straightened up from the window, pivoted, and left the parlor, walking out to the entrance hall. At the front door, she paid the postman and glanced at the folded letter, then exchanged a worried look with Peg, who had ambled into the entrance hall, wiping her large, capable hands on her apron.
Peg Tate, Harry’s nurse, had been Phillip and Alice’s nurse when they were children. Alice thought of her more as a family member than a servant. Kind-hearted as she was, even Peg was skeptical when it came to Lady Glenwood. “This ought to be a good one,” she grumbled.
“It’s not from Caro,” Alice said tautly, examining the letter. “It’s from Mr. Hattersley.” Hattersley was their London butler, who ran the Montagues’ elegant townhouse in Upper Brooke Street off Grosvenor Square.
“Oh, dear, I hope nothing’s wrong,” Peg murmured, her wrinkled brow creasing more deeply with worry.
A premonition prickled along Alice’s spine. She had long feared that her sister-in-law’s reckless pursuit of pleasure would end in disaster.
“Where’s Harry?” she asked uneasily.
“Nellie’s washin’ him up to see his mother.”
Alice nodded and cracked the seal. “ ‘Dear Miss Montague,’ ” she read out quietly, “ ‘received your letter day before last. Regret to inform you Lady G. left Town yesterday in the company of Lord Lucien Knight.’ ” She stopped and looked at Peg in astonishment. “Lucien Knight? But I thought it was Lord Damien . . . Oh, Caro!” She groaned, grasping at once what the feckless creature had done. Just when the woman had finally managed to pick a decent man—a man who would have made a perfect stepfather for Harry—she had gone and ruined it by running off with his brother!
She still recalled the conversation she had had with her sister-in-law weeks ago, when Caro had first bragged about catching the eye of the national hero. She had mentioned that Lord Damien had an identical twin brother, Lord Lucien, who was in the Diplomatic Corps. Demon and Lucifer, Caro had called them. Alice remembered it clearly because the baroness had shivered with a strange look of fascination in her eyes. I would never get involved with Lucien Knight, she had said. He scares me. Nobody scared the flamboyant Lady Glenwood.
“What else does Mr. Hattersley say?” Peg asked in trepidation.
“Lord, I hardly dare look.” Alice lifted the letter and read on. “ ‘They were bound for the gentleman’s country house, Revell Court, which I was able to learn lies about a dozen miles southwest of Bath. Her Ladyship is not expected back until next week. As the baroness ordered me not to tell you anything, I do not wish to cause any awkwardness. Please advise. Your servant, et cetera, J. Hattersley.’ ”
Peg scratched her cheek in stumped silence.
For a long moment, Alice stared at the floor, shaking her head in rising anger. She looked over broodingly and found the old woman watching her in patient, stoic concern. She gazed at Peg for a long moment, narrowed her eyes as her exasperation climbed, then suddenly handed Peg the letter and stalked past her toward the stairs.
“I’m going after her.”
“Oh, dearie, you mustn’t!” Peg exclaimed.
“I have to. This flagrant behavior must stop. Now.”
“But this man is a stranger and a scoundrel, I fear! If Her Ladyship sees fit to act like a hoyden, that is her concern.”
“And mine, as well. Did I not promise Phillip on his deathbed that I would take care of them—both of them? Harry needs his mother, and Caro needs to come home. Do you really think this man cares about her?”
Peg shrugged skeptically.
“Neither do I. I daresay this time she has gone and got herself caught in the middle of some petty sibling rivalry.” Alice paused. “Besides, you know if it turns into a full-blown scandal, it will taint my reputation, as well.”
“But Bath is so far, dear.”
“Only a day’s travel from here. I know the journey well. I have been there often enough.” She glanced toward the French windows, dainty and white, like the intricate bars of her canary’s cage. Dared she fly free out into the large and dangerous world?
She knew how Phillip would have answered—with a resounding no. Her brother would have called it unthinkable for a gently bred young lady to venture halfway across England without benefit of a male relative’s protection or the chaperonage of a married lady at the very least, but at the moment, Alice had neither. Besides, acting swiftly might be the only way to prevent Caro’s reckless affair from blossoming into an ugly scandal.
She turned back to her worried old nurse. “The weather is fine. If I leave right away, I can be there by tonight and have Caro home by tomorrow evening. All will be well,” she insisted with more self-assurance than she felt. “Mitchell will drive the coach, and Nellie will attend me.”
“Oh, but my dear,” Peg said sadly, “you and I both know she’ll only get in the way. We can tend him better by ourselves.”
Just then, Harry came barreling out of the hallway that led from the kitchen and hurtled against Peg’s skirts, clinging to her. He peered up the stairs at Alice. “Where my mama?”
Alice gazed at him in pained love. “Lost, lambkin.” She exchanged a meaningful glance with Peg. “But I know where to find her, and I am going to bring her home to you straightaway. I promise.”
“I come!”
“No.”
“Don’t scratch,” Peg chided, pulling his hand away from his scalp. He fussed and growled at her like an annoyed kitten.
Watching the scowl on his poor, red-spotted face, Alice felt torn in two. She could not bear to leave the child at a time like this, even for the purpose of fetching his errant mother, but she knew Caro would not come home unless she showed up in person to browbeat her into doing the right thing. She knew that with Peg on hand, she needn’t fear for Harry’s safety. Peg Tate had shepherded scores of children through the chicken pox and worse in her sixty-odd years and knew more about the whole matter than the arrogant local physician.
“Well, then,” the old woman said as she smoothed Harry’s rumpled hair, “the sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back. I’ll tell Mitchell to ready the horses.” She bent down and scooped the lad up, bouncing him in her fleshy arms and distracting him from his itches with a teasing little song.
Alice held up her skirts as she ran up the stairs to her bedroom. With brisk efficiency, she packed a satchel for her overnight stay, then took off her apron and morning gown and changed into her smart carriage dress of dark blue broadcloth. It had long, tight sleeves with a puff at the shoulder and pretty ribbon trimming along the hem.
Going to stand before the mirror, she neatly buttoned up the high-necked bodice, frowning at the slight tremble in her hands. In truth, she was unaccustomed to traveling alone, and Caro’s shadowy seducer did sound a wee bit intimidating. He was not going to like it one bit, she supposed, that she would soon arrive at Revell Court to snatch her sister-in-law out of his arms. Alice was not a particularly bold creature, but she knew she could stand up to anyone for Harry’s sake.
Pulling on her prim white gloves, she stared hard into the looking glass and squared her shoulders, ready to do battle. Enjoy your escapades, Lady Glenwood, for they are about to come to an end. As for you, Lord Lucien Knight, whoever you are, you, sir, are in a great deal of trouble with me. With that, she picked up her satchel and marched out of her room.
19-12-09, 11:12 PM
Lord of Fire by Gaelen Foley
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