If You Give a Rake a Ruby (2 page)

Warrick Fitzhugh did not relish an audience with the Queen. He did not know how it was he'd become her personal lackey, and he didn't give a bloody farthing. All he knew was the woman was mad. Daft as a resident of Bedlam, if he was any judge. And people claimed the King was mad. Well, those people hadn't met the Queen.

He sat in his club and rubbed his temples. Warrick had no problem taking orders. He'd been taking them from the Secretary of the Foreign Office for years, but now the Queen's cousin had been killed, and she wanted to give orders too.

It wasn't as though Warrick wasn't already investigating the death of his fellow Diamond in the Rough. He'd been turning every stone he could find for weeks now. He might be retired from the Foreign Office, but he wasn't going to leave his friend's murder unavenged. Warrick supposed that spending the rest of his days acting the profligate his father always assumed him to be would have to wait.

And so Fitzhugh sat at White's and waited for Pelham to meet him for their appointment. He resisted checking his pocket watch and instead surveyed the club. It was filled with the usual stoop-shouldered, gray-haired men with gnarled fingers turning crisply ironed pages of the
Times
. Earlier Warrick had noted his father, the Earl of Winthorpe, seated in his usual chair near a painting of Charles II and his various dogs. Warrick glanced over again and met his father's gaze.

Warrick lifted his glass and saluted. His father gave him a stony look and lifted his paper again.

Warrick drank from his glass—since it was raised anyway—and wondered if his father was going to blame him for the rest of his life. It wasn't as though Warrick hadn't tried to stop Edward.

They'd all tried to stop Edward from joining the military.

Impatient now, Warrick pulled out his pocket watch. Pelham was never late, but he was also a newly married man. He had been less than enthusiastic about leaving his bride to meet Warrick. But Warrick had insisted, most persuasively.

And he could be very persuasive when necessary…as evidenced by the sight of Pelham striding into the dining room. His clothing was perfectly in order, his blue eyes clear and hard, his mouth set in a firm slash. But something was different about the man. Warrick narrowed his eyes. Pelham's hair, perhaps? It appeared a bit…tousled.

He rose when his friend spotted him and didn't hide his grin.

“What are you looking so cheerful about?” the duke asked, taking a seat without being invited.

“Do I look cheerful?” Warrick sat, signaling to the waiter to bring the port he had already requested. It was a vintage Warrick knew Pelham liked. “Have you done something different?”

Pelham glanced at him sharply and shifted. Oh, now Warrick was going to enjoy this. Making Pelham uncomfortable was one of the few joys he had in life. “Your coat cut differently?” He pretended to study Pelham's conservative coat. “Your cravat tied in a new sort of knot?” He reached out and touched the perfectly tied neck cloth—perfectly tied in the same fashion Pelham had always worn it. “No, that isn't it.”

“Stubble it, Fitzhugh. There's nothing different.”

“Oh, I think there is.” He looked pointedly at Pelham's hair and could all but see the duke leaning back in his chair, away from Warrick's scrutiny. “It's your hair. Why, Pelham. It's positively
fashionable
.”

“My hair is exactly the same. Now why the devil did you call me here?”

“I don't believe so.”

The waiter set the port in front of Pelham and Fitzhugh waved the man away.

“It looks a bit tousled. That's how the dandies are wearing it these days.”

Pelham slapped the table with his palm. “I'm no bloody dandy. Stop looking at my hair.”

“Can I assume this is the new Duchess of Pelham's doing?” Fitzhugh asked with a satisfied smile.

“I don't wish to discuss my hair. If that's the only topic you want to converse about—” He stood, and Warrick yanked him back down.

“What the devil are you about?” Pelham adjusted his sleeve. “Have you gone quite mad?”

“No. I have a serious matter to discuss with you.”

Pelham narrowed his eyes. “It had better not be the state of my cravat.”

“No. I fear we must suspend our fashion discussions for the moment. I need to ask you about one of your wife's friends, one of The Three Diamonds.”

Pelham drank his previously untouched port, swallowed, then said, “Why?”

“I'm not at liberty to discuss that. I can say it's a matter of state.”

“I thought you'd retired from the Foreign Office.”

“On occasion I am still called upon to exercise my skills.”

“I see.”

“What do you know about the Marchioness of Mystery? She calls herself Fallon, I believe.”

Pelham shrugged. “Not much. She's not as friendly as Lily.”

“She's secretive,” Warrick remarked.

Pelham sipped his port. “I don't know that I'd say that, but I don't believe all that rot about her being foreign royalty or a gypsy queen.”

“No, that's rubbish,” Warrick murmured.

“How do you know? I don't think Juliette even knows where Fallon came from. And what does a courtesan have to do with a matter of state?”

“I'd love to discuss that with you, old chap…”

“But you can't. Well I will tell you this. I don't know who you're looking for, but if it's a spy or a traitor, looking at Fallon is looking in the wrong direction.”

Warrick leaned forward. “Go on.”

“She's fiercely loyal—to her friends and to the Countess of Sinclair. The last time I saw her, she told Juliette she was relieved this business with Lucifer was over and done. She said he was…” Pelham rubbed his fingers together, obviously searching his memory for the exact words. Warrick appreciated his friend's effort to be precise, but then again, he expected nothing less from the orderly Duke of Pelham. “Ah! She said Lucifer was a thorn in the side of the city and had been for years. Struck me as rather patriotic.”

A tingle ran up Warrick's spine all the way to the base of his skull and then down his arms. So this Fallon knew of Lucifer. That was interesting because the very existence of the man was not common knowledge among anyone who did not frequent London's gambling hells. And those were certainly not the usual haunts of glittering courtesans like The Three Diamonds.

Pelham didn't know it, but by trying to defend his wife's friend, he'd just confirmed everything Warrick had learned, thereby dooming her.

“I had better be going,” Pelham said, rising. “We are leaving early in the morning. I told Juliette I'd take her to Bath.”

“One more thing.” Warrick rose. “Has the duchess, your wife, ever called Fallon by any other name? Besides the Marchioness of Mystery?”

“Not in my hearing. Do you want me to ask Juliette if Fallon has another name?”

“No. Don't say anything. In fact, I'd prefer if you kept the topic of this meeting to yourself.”

“Of course. Good luck with your search, Fitzhugh.”

“Thank you. Godspeed.” Warrick watched Pelham stroll out of his club. The man was obviously in a hurry to return to his bride. And why shouldn't he be? He was married to one of the most beautiful and notorious women in London. Someone—Warrick suspected the girls themselves—had put it about that the Prince Regent gave them their sobriquets. Juliette had been the Duchess of Dalliance before becoming a legitimate duchess and Pelham's wife. Lily was the Countess of Charm, and Fallon, the one he sought, was the Marchioness of Mystery. Warrick thought the marchioness might not be such a mystery after all.

Warrick gave his father a salute, which the earl ignored, and strolled out of his club.

***

Two days later, Warrick had been to more social events than he normally attended in a year. Fallon appeared to have boundless energy. She and her counterpart, the Countess of Charm, went everywhere and knew everyone. He did not know when they slept because they danced until after four in the morning and then began making calls or receiving callers at ten.

What Warrick did know was that, for a courtesan, Fallon was remarkably difficult to corner. He had tried, quite unsuccessfully, on several occasions to get her alone. It had proved impossible. And so tonight he had been left with no other recourse but to adjourn to the one place he knew he could have a private conversation—her boudoir.

Warrick had been impressed with her staff, in particular her giant butler. The man had almost caught Warrick as he wound his way through Fallon's town house and up to her private chambers. Once in her chambers, he'd had to deal with Fallon's lady's maid. He'd bound her and stashed her comfortably in Fallon's rather large dressing room, and then he'd returned to wait.

And wait.

He didn't know at what point he'd decided to lie down on the bed. He'd only known he was weary and wanted to close his eyes for a few moments. He didn't expect to sleep. He rarely slept. But he'd been startled from a light doze when something—rather, someone—sat on him. He realized immediately what had happened. She had not seen him in the dark room. To her credit, when she jumped up, she did not scream. He heard the hasty intake of breath, but she seemed able to control the impulse to utter a bloodcurdling screech.

“It's about time you came to bed,” Warrick said. It was too dark to see his pocket watch, but he gauged the time close to five in the morning. “I've been waiting for hours.”

“Oh, how rude of me,” she said, her voice quite low and husky in the shadowed room. He could hear her fumbling about and realized she probably sought her tinderbox. “To keep an uninvited man waiting.”

A moment later a spunk blazed to life, and she lit one of the lamps beside the bed. Upon seeing him, her brow creased. He was obviously not who she expected. And she was not what he expected. He'd seen her more times than he could count, but he'd rarely been this close to her, and when he had, he'd not been looking at her but planning how to best monopolize her attention. Now she was an arm's length away and, for once, not surrounded by an army of admirers.

Warrick realized she was impossibly beautiful.

But of course she was beautiful. He'd known that. Everyone knew that. She had lustrous chocolate-brown hair and dark brown eyes. Her skin was the color of burnished gold, and her body far more voluptuous than was the current style. But what man ever favored a Greek statue? A man wanted soft flesh and warm curves when he sank into a woman.

And Warrick didn't know why the hell he was thinking of soft flesh at the moment. He was supposed to be working. But he hadn't anticipated the distraction of her mouth. It was wide and red and far too tempting. And then there was the tilt of her eyes—rather exotic the way they turned up at the corners. No wonder people tossed about rumors she was a gypsy queen. Warrick's gaze wandered downward, and he had to take a fortifying breath. It was one thing to glimpse her body across a crowded ballroom. It was quite another to feel the heat from her, to see the rise and fall of the rounded flesh revealed by her neckline, to smell the scent—jasmine or some exotic flower—she wore, and to know if he buried his face in her hair that sweet scent would surround him.

“Get the hell out of my bed,” she said in a velvet voice that only made him desire her more.

Warrick didn't even sit. “I have a few questions for you.”

“Get out, or I'll call my butler and have you thrown out.”

“I don't think so.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned back on her prodigious pile of pillows. They were satin and velvet, arrayed in every jewel tone he could imagine. The mountain was quite comfortable except for the occasional beaded pillow whose ornamentation dug into one's skin.

“Oh, really? I've already thrown one man out tonight. I can do so again.” She started for the door with a fast, purposeful stride he had not seen before, but before she could reach for the handle, he spoke.

“I would not do that,
Margaret
. Or should I call you Maggie?”

***

Fallon stilled, not trusting her ears. Her hands had begun to shake, and she clenched them to still their trembling. Slowly, she turned. “I believe I see your mistake now, sir. You have me confused with someone else.”

“No, I don't.” His hands remained linked arrogantly behind his head as if he had not a care in the world. Fallon felt like pulling all the pillows out from under him so he would knock his skull on the headboard. Then she'd hold those pillows over his face until she smothered him.

Bloody man!

“Mr. Fitzhugh—is that your name?”

“It is, but you may call me Warrick. I think it only fair since I intend to call you by your given name—
Maggie
.”

“I'm afraid you are mistaken, Mr. Fitzhugh. My name is Fallon—not that I've given you leave to use it. And I really am going to have to insist you leave now.”

“Insist all you want, but I'm not leaving until I get what I came for.”

Fallon's blood chilled in her veins. All men were the same. They wanted one thing and would apparently go to any length to take it. She did not know how this man had discovered her real name. And she didn't know what else he knew about her, but she did know if he thought he was going to outwit her, he had a lot to learn.

She had been outwitting arrogant men since the age of five.

She put a hand on her hip. “And I suppose if I do not give you what you want then you will reveal my secret.”

“It's called blackmail, and yes, that is generally how it works. Now that we both know the rules…”

“Oh, I make the rules, Mr. Fitzhugh.” She sidled closer to the bed. “After all, we are in my bedchamber.”

“I…” He trailed off when she dropped her shawl on the floor beside the bed and, lifting her skirts, crawled onto her satin coverlet.