Elisabeth Fairchild (10 page)

“You would do well to avoid the Ramsays, Miss Selwyn. Most especially that one.”

Dulcie had watched him walk away from rescuing her, away from the hero worship in her eyes. She had tried to sound calm, collected, as if it were no great thing to be stripped naked in a mad throng, no great, life-changing event to be snatched from the jaws of death by London’s most notorious rogue.

 “He saved my life, Lydia. I cannot, in good conscience, avoid someone who so instrumentally obliged himself to me.”

 “That he would oblige himself is the problem.”

But Lydia had been wrong. He had not sought her out, asked nothing of her. Their ensuing encounters had been chance or fate--until this remarkable, memorable, long anticipated night.

He wanted her. The idea makes her blush. He pursued her amazing potential. What did that mean? What did he want?

She look for him among the masked guests, hope running high. The flame red hair, the foxy mask, were not to be found. A disappointment. The rest of the evening passed in a blur of secret longing, of consuming curiosity. What did he want?

Her party returned to London late, by way of another barge. The moon ran ahead of them, a cold, silver chariot, the Thames bleaker than before. Half past three in the morning and Lydia still babbled like a brook. From whence did such a font of energy spring?

“A success, this evening, think you not?” Lydia expected no answer. “No end of compliments, my dears, on the cleverness of my hood and bells.” She gave them a happy jingle. “And so many fine gentleman who danced with you, Dulcie.”

“Gentlemen?” Her husband protests dryly. “Beasts, the lot of them.”

“Indeed,” Dulcie agree, and suffered a pang of regret that one beast in particular disappeared so suddenly into the night.

In Wellclose Square, she bid her friends a merry, weary adieu, glad to slip from feathered finery as she quietly climbed lamp-lit stairs, glad of silence and opportunity to contemplate. What did Roger Ramsay want of her?

She found no peace in her bedchamber’s gloom. Too many questions, too many visions ran through her head. She stirred the fire, lit a second candle, unlaced her dress in flickering light, pacing the room’s length.

A noise at the window roused gooseflesh as her feathered ball gown fluttered to the floor. The wind, perhaps. And yet it made her nervous.

Drapes rippled. She had not left the window open.

Without giving herself time to consider the wisdom of the move, she grabbed the poker from beside the fire, and whirling, stabbed the drapes, not once but several times, Hamlet reenacted, certain she would find someone.

“Put that thing down! I cannot hold on any longer.” Punctured damask muffled a familiar voice.

“Oh God!” Fearful her father might hear, in hushed indignation, Dulcie flung back the drape.

Roger Ramsay clung to the windowsill, dangling precariously.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to get in, without being pinked in the process.” He answered politely, as if there were no other logical conclusion to be drawn. “I had no idea you were so handy with fireside implements, or I most certainly would have announced myself.”

He grabbed the poker one-handed, knocking her off balance.

She might have let go had he not drawled sarcastically, “Pull me in. I’ve no embers to stir out here.”

“And still less in here,” she hissed indignantly, aware she stood clad only in corset and petticoats, heart pounding. “You’ve no business on my rain spout. Still less in my bedchamber. Go back down the way you came up.”

He ignored her suggestion, pulled himself part way in, shoved the window wider, the reflection of firelight, of candlelight, briefly dazzling. Nimbly, he swung one leg over the sill as if he had done it many times.

She reached above him to bring down the window, no logic to the action. Panicked, she would shut out the danger of him, never considering that he might fall. He grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the sash, as he swung the other leg in, suggesting dryly, “However would you explain away a man with his brains dashed out immediately beneath your window, and you with no clothes on?”

She flushed. Her glare was met with a mischievous gleam, firelight flickering devilishly in his eyes. He unnerved her completely. She stepped back, let go the poker. It fell to the rug with a musical bounce, loud enough to wake the house. And yet, none came running to investigate.

She remained alone, undiscovered and largely unclothed, with the notorious “Rogering” Ramsay.

Chapter Fifteen

The Selwyn Townhouse, Wellclose Square, London

They stared at one another a breathless moment, the Wedgewood blue danger of his eyes vivid. As was the cloud that enveloped him. She could not forget the images his touch inspired--hot, bothersome images, of bared flesh, searching hands, searching lips. Heat bloomed low in her abdomen, an alarming sensation.

She backed away, arms crossed protectively over her bosom, too exposed in the low necked confines of her corset. “Do you mean to ravish me?”

Wordless, he cleared the window.

“I will scream,” she threatened. “The whole house will come running.”

He made no move to follow, simply leaned against the windowsill, gaze alone pursuing her, dangerous in his very languid inactivity. “You would be left with a great deal of explaining to do.”

“Why should I not dash from the room and raise an alarm?”

He shrugged, an inevitability to his answer, “You would not then know why I have gone to such trouble to speak to you alone.” With a gesture as lazy as the tail of a sunning cat, he waved her away. “Go! Cover yourself!”

She escaped into the dressing room, stood a moment back pressed to the door, heart racing, fear and hope leaping in her veins; ache, want and need clutching her from within. She could raise an alarm in an instant and have the whole house down upon him as she had threatened, but he would be out the window and gone before her father sat up in bed.

A compelling drama hummed beneath the surface of this highly inappropriate liaison. Was this the moment their every chance encounter had been leading to? Unsure of herself, she faced the door that separated her from the man who might with no more than a loud word, ruin her reputation, her future

A single unlocked door seemed too flimsy a defense against the threat of the Gargoyle, the King’s
agent provocateur
. Her imagination conjured lurid visions. What would he have of her in the middle of the night, by way of her bedroom window other than the most predictable of perfidies? Logic dictated one thing, his light, another.

 She ducked flushed face into high-necked nightshift. The odor of her perfume, trapped in the protective tent of its voluminous folds, smelled stronger than usual. Sweet. Musky. She might have gone to him like that, the nightshift covering her stays. It would have been wisest, safest. But she had waited years for Roger Ramsay. Truth thrummed in her veins, tingled in my fingertips, left her gasping for air in whalebone confinement. Awkward and fumbling she clawed at the tapes, knowing each bow undone left her more vulnerable, naked, exposed.

Whalebone dropped with a familiar rattle to the floor. Lips parting, Roger imagined her disrobed, curves revealed. Irritated with himself, he closed eyes and mind to desire. He meant to delve Miss Selwyn’s intellect rather than her body. Did he not?

He focused on her room, her bed an inappropriate diversion--far too inviting, drapes drawn back on one side, the coverlet folded back, pillows plumped. He crossed the room, chin set, eyes taking in everything. Fans and feathers, jewelry boxes and hair combs littered her dressing table. A scent bottle unstoppered, he held to his nose. For a moment his imagination returned him to a moonlit garden.

Her bookshelves were safe--an entrance to her mind emerged by way of the gilded spines. Swift and sure, he ran a finger along the titles--tomes and pamphlets, treatises and lexicons--few of them calf-bound or gilt-edged--each work a peek into the machinations of her mind. Here, shelved, in black and white, stood evidence of the levels of her curiosity, the focus of her interests, clues to worlds into which she escaped.

New titles. German and French.
Interessantes sur le Magne’tisme
Animal
had been slipped onto the shelf between two of the most recent Gothic romances.
Journal du traitment magne’tique
stood cheek to cheek with a stack of French fashion plates.
Historie Critique du Magnetism Animal
rubbed shoulders with latest
Annual Register
.

Another volume had been dropped on the floor beside the bed, a leather bookmark hanging like a tail between spread-legged pages. He plucked it up, and returned to the window, eyes drawn to the door, pulse quickening, lips gone dry.

Fabric rustled. A vision of bared female charms assailed his imagination. It had been too long since he had indulged his baser needs.

The door eased open a crack.  She peered through, a shadow behind the wavering light of her candle.

With the lazy intensity of a cat outside a mouse hole, he coaxed softly, “Come along. I will not bite.”

Candle quaking in the draft from the open window, she stepped into the room, fresh and girlish, in stiff white linen buttoned to the neck, feet bare, dark hair clouding her shoulders.

“What is so important that you would climb a rainspout in the middle of the night? What is worth risking my reputation?” She whispered, her voice adding unexpected intimacy to the intensity of her questions. He had his answer prepared, indeed, dropped the words carefully into a little pool of silence to enhance their weighty implication, his head bent to hers. She smelled familiar--musky--peaches and cloves.

“The safety and future of king and country bring me to you in the middle of the night, Miss Selwyn.” He spoke slowly, simply, with every hope the importance of the idea would erase the wary terror trapped in wide blue eyes.

She blinked, childlike, looked a little less interested in bolting for the door, and crossed to a chair by the fire, her movements uncertain. Her gown went briefly transparent when she passed in front of the fire’s low glow--not at all childlike.

He turned the book in his hands, the calfskin soft as a woman’s shoulder. He read aloud the title, his tone mocking. “
Mesmerism, or the System of Reciprocal Influences; the Theory and Practice of Animal Magnetism as a Generally Applied Treatment Which Will Preserve Mankind
. You would preserve mankind, Miss Selwyn?” His brows rose. “A dangerous business, that.”

“I would offer you a chair first.” She gestured.

He rose from the windowsill, aware her eyes followed his every move. As if she sensed his arousal, her gaze, in tandem with his thoughts, slipped now and again to the nearby bed.

He drew the chair she had indicated closer to the one into which she sank, saying quietly, in all sincerity, “I would know you better, Miss Selwyn.”

She felt like a lamb inviting a lion to sit beside it, so strong flowed his color and energy. It floated throughout the room, overflowed the chair, humming against her flesh, lifting the hair at the nape of her neck.

“How?” she asked.

“Tell me.” He sat forward in his chair, knees almost touching hers, the space never completely breeched, yet it felt as if he brushed against her. His eyes blazed divinely blue, the light in them relentless, so keenly aware of all that she was, she had to look away. “What is it, you see?”

She stared at her hands, clasped demurely in her lap, at his knee, so close to hers she could see his light bend to hers, blend with hers.

“Light,” she said. “Color.”

She peeped at him through her lashes.

Gleaming black boot leather threatened the pale bareness of her toes. She tucked them under her nightshift’s hem. His breeches, embroidered waistcoat, white shirtsleeves, white stock and lace seemed formal, out of place in the context of her bedroom where she sat clad in bedclothes. He had abandoned the fox’s high-necked overcoat. The easier to climb her rainspout, she supposed. The bound back tail of his hair reminded her of his earlier fox’s disguise, as did his eyes, staring at her with a feral intensity, as if he would read the very marrow of her bones.

“Explain.”

As easy as that.

She shrugged and indicated a candle at the table behind him. “Fetch the light.”

He twisted in the chair. His knee bumped hers, that small contact shooting through her like lightening. Candle in hand, he turned back to her, making no move to disconnect the link of their legs. His attention seemed focused on nothing but the candle as he balanced the pewter holder on her book, the book in turn balanced on the very knee that touched hers.

She focused on nothing but his knee, alarmed by the image of the two of them naked, joined far more intimately as the idea flooded her mind. Abruptly she readjusted her position, breaking contact, jarring the book. Candle flame wavering, his eyes met hers, flaring with reflected light.

She focused on the candle. “You see the flame?”

“Of course.”

“And around the flame, its luminescence?”

His willingness to understand shone brightly.

“Take away the flame, leaving only the halo of light. That is what I see.”

“Emanating from?” He frowned, a haze of doubt replacing the brilliance in his light, in his eyes.

“Life. All living things. Sometimes even inanimate objects, entire rooms soak up the residual glow of a person who passes through, or who touches them.”

Brow furrowed, doubt gathered like milky clouds before his eyes. “Blue. Yellow? My luminescence?” He studied her as intently as before but physically he withdrew, sinking back, taking with him the light.

She nodded warily.

“And in my blue and yellow light you saw another man’s death? And lions?” Skepticism laced his whispered words.

She shrugged, too much to tell, said only, “I see images sometimes.”