Angel choked with laughter? “Ask—”
“I thought of quizzing the contessa,” confessed Maddie. “But Jordan whisked her out of town before I had the chance.” She drew his hand to her breast.
Angel had never known anything sweeter than her heart beating against his palm. Or been gifted with more poignant a request.
He surveyed the tack room. “I don’t believe that I have ever dallied in a coach house before.”
“
Are
we going to dally?” Maddie inquired, so huskily that his toes curled in his boots.
Angel wasn’t one to leave a lady’s curiosity, most especially this lady’s curiosity, unsatisfied. “We are, indeed.”
He rose, crossed to the door and barred it; returned to Maddie and drew her to her feet. She moved closer to him, wound her arms around his neck. He plucked the remaining pins from her hair, savored the fragrant weight of it sliding across his hands, over her shoulders; lowered his head and nuzzled her, half-drunk on her scent; unbuttoned her cambric dress and slipped it off her shoulders, taking care not to jostle her bruised wrist. She tugged at his jacket, his cravat. Between them they made short work of hooks and buttons, tapes and ties, then paused to regard one another, he in shirtsleeves and boots and breeches, she in corset and chemise.
Maddie slipped her hands under his shirt. Angel shuddered at her touch. Lest he fall on her with no more finesse than the late unlamented puff-guts, he gently clasped her arms and drew her onto his lap. She smoothed her hands across his chest.
Angel groaned. Or perhaps it was Maddie who made that desperate, hungry sound. He kissed her slowly, and then not so slowly, with infinite care and thoroughness, until she was half-crazed with wanting and her breath came raggedly; and then there was nothing for it but that she must madden him in turn. These mutual demonstrations of devotion progressed in so satisfactory a manner that, when the participants paused to draw in much-needed breath, they should by rights have found that if the paint wasn’t scorched entirely off the coach house, the tack room walls were at least charred.
Various articles were strewn over the floor, but not Mrs. Tate’s stockings, which Mr. Jarrow had begged she leave in place. Poor Clara goggled and clucked and hid her head beneath her wing.
Maddie disengaged herself long enough to scoop up the chicken, open the window, and deposit her outside.
She closed the window and returned to Angel.
And the song she sang for him then was the sweetest he had ever heard.
In days to come, the gossips would say, and frequently, that Mr. Jarrow was no fit companion for Mrs. Tate and her two sons. Speculation rose to fever pitch when the gentleman and lady wed in a private ceremony attended by Lord Saxe, Mr. and Mrs. Corbin Denny, Viscount Ashcroft but not his mama, Mrs. Tate’s two sons and their tutor, minus her father and the dog; but, when no developments of an even faintly salacious nature followed, interest in them gradually waned. Forgotten by the rumormongers, Angel and his Diana were left in peace to enjoy their long lives together without recourse to either turtle or trapeze, although a masquerade costume was occasionally resurrected and enjoyed.
As for Lord Saxe and Mrs. Kingston and their various associates—
That’s a tale for another day
.
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Turn the page for a preview of THE TYBURN WALTZ, book I of The Tyburn Trilogy.
Chapter One
“
More,” she murmured. “Harder. Faster.” Ned eyed the breasts swaying before him, laved one rosy nipple with his tongue. The bedstead creaked beneath them. Lilah was racing hell for leather. He thanked God she didn’t have a riding crop.
He took firmer grip on her slender hips, thrust upward into her, again and again, at a good spanking pace. She gasped and moaned and rode him like the well-seasoned equestrienne that she was. Their bodies were slick with sweat, their image faintly ludicrous in the mirror hung above the bed. An ignoble end for the fifteenth Earl of Dorset: asphyxiated while taking his pleasure amid a whore’s tumbled sheets.
Ned couldn’t die yet. His cousin had been quite clear about the reproductive duties of an earl. He reached down and slid his fingers into Lilah’s damp curls. A skilled caress, and then another. Her body tensed. One more deft manipulation. She shuddered, and groaned. As did he. She collapsed upon his chest.
Moments passed, before she stirred, and slid off him. Ned opened his eyes. Lilah made a pretty picture, stretched beside him on her crimson satin sheets. Her long, thick chestnut hair fanned out on the pillow. Her lavender eyes, as they met his in the mirror, held the cynical expression of one who had no illusions about the world.
Ned sat up and reached for his waistcoat. “I’ve brought you something. You won’t insult me by refusing it.” While it was the custom for patrons of Lilah’s establishment to give her girls a present — which was then passed along to their employer who in turn shared with them a small portion of its worth — Lilah seldom accepted such tokens for herself. He dropped a string of glittering gems on the sheet.
Lilah held the bracelet up to the light, contemplated the quality of the stones, fastened it on her wrist and admired it again. “I wouldn’t dream of insulting you. Or your excellent taste. Thank you, Ned.”
“You know I would be happy to do more.” He began to dress.
Lilah propped herself up among her pillows to better watch her guest pull on his clothes. The fifteenth Earl of Dorset — to her forever mere Ned Fairchild — was all graceful hard-muscled strength, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, thick hair of a deep auburn shade, and eyes a woman might drown in, had she so little sense. His face was saved from beauty by a slightly aquiline nose and a more-than-slightly wicked month. “Since you are so eager to be of service, you may go downstairs and tell me if my new French chef is worth the fortune I am paying him,” she said.
The moment for any serious conversation had clearly passed. Ned smoothed his hair and gave his cravat one last twitch before he stepped out into the hall.
The Academy was doing a brisk business this evening, its elegant apartments graced with gentlemen in evening dress, women in gowns as fashionable as any worn by ladies of the
ton.
Ned strolled through the supper room, assured himself that Lilah’s French chef lived up to his reputation; spared a brief glance into another chamber where an enactment of the Tahitian Feast of Venus was underway. This highly imaginative tribute to the anthropological researches of Captain Cook featured live sex acts performed by South Sea Island ‘maidens’
and a dozen
well-endowed athletic youths. Flower-wreathed dildos added a whimsical touch.
Ned had seen it all
before. And done it, like as not. Once with considerably more enjoyment than now.
Everything had changed, and not for the better, since he’d become a bloody earl. He collected his hat and greatcoat from a servant. Perhaps a brisk walk might clear the cobwebs from his head.
King’s Place was situated near the royal palace. Almost all the houses lining the street were dedicated to pleasure, their interiors designed by the likes of the Adam brothers, decorated with furniture in the elegant styles of Sheraton and Hepplewhite. Liveried servants were
de rigueur,
as well as expensive carriages, for the residents never walked anywhere except in St. James’s Park. Unlike Ned, who pulled up his coat collar and set out for a stroll.
He had not far to travel, yet still far enough that a more prudent man might have chosen not to go afoot. The streets were dark and empty save for the watchman in his box, the occasional carriage that emerged wraith-like from obscuring mist made up of equal parts coal smoke and river fog. A skinny dog snarled at Ned as it slunk into an alleyway. Moodily, he kicked at a pile of rubble, half-wishing that some thugs would try and interfere with him so that he might break their heads.
No one interfered, alas, and at length he reached his destination, an ancient brick structure perched near the river on the north side of the Thames. The old house pleased Ned, for it stood as far beyond the pale as he. Wakely Court had been the ancestral home of his grandmother’s family, all now deceased.
The
ramshackle building stretched three stories above the street, was adorned with turrets and gables and a forest of tall rectangular chimneys, bay and mullioned windows with tiny jeweled diamond panes set in designs of ornamental lead.
Light shone from a great many of those windows, despite the lateness of the hour. Ned approached the front door.
That great portal creaked open to reveal a glum-faced individual of middle years and impressive girth, his old-fashioned livery oddly spattered with damp. “I believe you will find Mistress Clea in the library, my lord,” said Tidcombe, as he took Ned’s hat and coat.
Ned mounted the stair. Although she refused to accept it, Clea at fifteen years of age was not altogether grown up. He wondered what excuse she would have, this time, for being out of bed so late.
Candles blazed in the library, illuminating heavy oak furniture embellished with intricately carved animals and flowers; a chimneypiece featuring Bacchanalian revels rife with nubile maidens and satyrs and a large quantity of grapevines; a ceiling with massive molded beams supporting lesser timbers, the spaces between filled with plastered lath. Dusty velvet draperies hung at the windows. Moth-eaten tapestries adorned the paneled walls. Countless books lined the old shelves, rested tipsily on the floor alongside maps of the world, a calculating board with counters, and a perpetual almanac in a frame. The library was Ned’s favorite chamber. To its clutter, he had added a huge pewter inkstand and an excessively ugly statue that he had brought back from his travels and given place of honor on the old desk.
The first thing Ned noticed as he stepped into the brightly-lit room was that one window lacked a curtain. Second was the aroma of spilt brandy that hung heavy in the air. Third was his sister, perched on the chair behind his desk. She was aglow with excitement. Dirt smeared her muslin nightdress, and one pretty cheek. Cobwebs bedecked her mahogany hair.
Ned folded his arms and tried to look stern. “What was it this time? Vergil? Apuleius?”
She twinkled at him. “Juvenal. But I truly was asleep! A noise woke me. I think it was Nyx.”
Wakely Court’s most recent tenant had left behind not only a full complement of servants — Tidcombe the butler, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Scroggs; several maidservants, two named Mary; a number of footmen, chief among them James — but also a large feline with jet-black fur and eerie golden eyes and an exalted notion of its own worth.
Ned glanced warily around, located the cat perched atop a stack of books. If Nyx lacked the ambition of her namesake — who, born of Chaos, spawned a brood of dark spirits including the Fates, Nemesis, Death, Strife and Pain — she had the attitude down pat, as displayed now by means of a disdainfully curled lip.
The curled lip was directed not at Ned, but at the fireplace. Ned turned in that direction. “What the devil?” he inquired.
Clea beamed. “I’ve been on the fidgets for fear you wouldn’t return home in time, and I might fall asleep, and she might escape. That is why Bates has the firearm. I told him he might trust me to guard her, but he said you’d have his head.”
Bates, the grizzled batman who had been with Ned in the Peninsula, was indeed holding a firearm. “You would have, sir, and that’s a fact,” he said.
“I still might.” Drawn up close to the fireplace was an armchair. Seated in the armchair was a slight figure bound with cords.
Ned’s window cords, if his eyesight did not deceive him. “Would someone please explain?”
“I caught a housebreaker!” crowed Clea. “Or Nyx did, because she tripped her. And then I pulled the curtain down, and knocked her on the head.”
Ned looked at his decanter, which lay empty on the carpet. “Couldn’t you have used the inkstand, or the globe?”
Clea waved off his objections. “A housebreaker, Ned! I knew you would like it of all things.”
Ned would have liked it even better if his good smuggled French brandy was not splashed about the room
.
Now that he had decided he wasn’t cup-shot, he could have used a drink.
“Why is she so damp? Why are
you
so damp? Where are her clothes?”
The housebreaker was clad in nothing but the velvet drape, so far as he could tell. She was a little bit of a thing, and looked not much older than Clea herself.
“Her clothes were truly dreadful.” Clea sounded as prim and disapproving as if she cared about such stuff. “It was only fitting she should have a bath. Bates and Tidcombe helped. And James. At least, they helped until we realized she was a girl! She had on boy’s clothing, Ned, and though her breeches were beyond dirty, it was an excellent idea. Just think of trying to climb a drainpipe in skirts. She must have got in the house that way.
After we discovered she was female,
it was Mrs. Scroggs and the Marys and me. And Bates. But everything was very proper. Bates looked at the ceiling while he held the gun.”
Clea might believe Bates had looked only at the ceiling while
in a naked female’s presence. Ned knew otherwise. He
glanced at his batman. Bates had the grace to blush.
“Her garments were considerably nastier than she was underneath them,” added Clea. “I think the grime is part of her disguise. And a prodigious clever disguise it was, because it fooled us all.”
The housebreaker did not appear much gratified by Clea’s approval. Patches of dirt still clung to her small person. Impossible to tell the color of her hair under all its grease, but her big blue eyes shot angry sparks.
Ned moved closer to the captive. “Why is she gagged?”
“Bates said her language wasn’t fitting for my ears. What’s a gundiguts?”
A gundiguts was a prim pursy fellow. “Tidcombe,” said Ned.
Clea nodded, satisfied. “And a bundle-tail?”
“Mrs. Scroggs, no doubt.” That worthy was both short and squat.
Clea clapped her hands together.
“I am furthering my education! Nickninny I knew, and lobcock. What about
gingambobs?”
Ned opened his mouth and closed it, appalled at how close he had come to discussing testicles with his sister. Bates cleared his throat. Behind her gag, Ned could have sworn the housebreaker smirked.
He appropriated the pistol. “You’ve had enough educating for one evening. I’ll deal with this now.”
Clea bounced indignantly in her chair. “But
I
caught her!” she wailed.
“Yes, and a good job you did of it.” Ned pulled his sister to her feet. “Now go back to bed.”
She shot him a reproachful glance. Her lower lip quivered. Her shoulders slumped. Unmoved, Ned turned her toward the doorway. “Bates will escort you to your room.”
The batman was no more eager than Clea to be dismissed. “You might want to think again, sir. That one’s a she-devil. Precious near took a bite right off me arm.”
“And I might not!” retorted Ned. “The chit’s no bigger than a minute. Hardly a danger to a great strong fellow like myself. Or maybe you think that since I resigned my commission I’ve gone soft?”