Читать книгу Regency Sins: Pickpocket Countess / Notorious Rake, Innocent Lady - Bronwyn Scott - Страница 14

Nora, dressed in her frumpiest Eleanor Habersham finery, concluded the evening was not going as planned a few hours later, after finding herself partnered at whist with none other than Brandon Wycroft himself.

‘What did we bid?’ Nora asked for the thousandth time that night in Miss Habersham’s nasally voice, hoping that her irritating mannerisms were enough to distract Stockport from the fact that they were on the brink of winning their second rubber.

She was certain a man like Stockport would never believe a silly woman like Miss Habersham could be so canny at cards. However, Nora could not bring herself to cheat at cards simply to live up—or down, as the case might be—to Stockport’s notions. If there were two things Nora could not abide, they were cheats and liars. She would not make herself both just to reinforce Stockport’s beliefs about the card-playing abilities of a spinster. So she spent the evening across from her self-sworn nemesis, tittering behind her hand of cards at Stockport’s polite conversation while soundly routing their opponents with astute play.

‘We bid spades,’ Stockport said with commendable patience while Nora made a production of peering at her hand through her thick lenses.

Nora tossed a card on the table, intensely aware of Stockport’s cobalt gaze fixed on her. ‘What is it, my lord? Have I misplayed?’

‘Quite the contrary, Miss Habersham, I think you want to fool us into underestimating you.’ Stockport smiled another of his drawing-room smiles, polite, charming and yet somehow slightly mocking—of who or what, Nora could not divine.

‘There is nothing to underestimate,’ Nora offered smoothly, playing a trump.

‘I think there is. You’ve shown yourself to be an outstanding card player this evening,’ Stockport complimented. He turned the conversation towards the woman seated to his left. ‘Mrs Tidewell, is Miss Habersham always so capable at card parties?’

The woman blushed and thought for a moment. ‘I suppose she is. Miss Habersham is always winning, but she’s so humble we forget how handily she plays.’

‘I am fortunate in my partners,’ Nora responded, gathering the last trick. ‘There, my lord. We’ve made our bid. You can speculate all you like about my card playing, but I say it is merely luck and good partners.’ Nora rose and stretched, grateful that the other two tables were finishing their hands and that the tea trolley had arrived.

Tables began to break up and guests milled around the tea service, Stockport among them. Nora was glad to be out from under his sharp eyes after enduring the evening under their scrutiny. Within the hour the party would reach its conclusion and she could get on with her business.

Nora took a seat on a nearby couch and tried to look unobtrusive. She failed completely. Within minutes, Stockport’s sharp eyes found her. Damn.

‘Miss Habersham, would you like some tea?’ She’d expected Stockport to join some of the male guests present but here he was, dancing attendance on the village spinster, a delicate tea cup in each hand and looking handsomely at ease with the difficult manoeuvre. How the London ladies must swoon over him, Nora mused, thanking her stars that she was made of sterner stuff.

‘Thank you.’ Nora took the tea he offered, trying to ignore the empty space on the couch next to her.

Stockport smiled gently. When she didn’t invite him to sit, he invited himself. ‘Miss Habersham, may I join you?’

‘Oh, certainly,’ Nora fluttered, covering up for her lack of manners. ‘Although I am surprised you are not seeking out the company of your friends.’

‘I already know them, Miss Habersham. I don’t know you. This is the perfect opportunity to get to know my newest neighbor. How long have you been at the Grange?’

Drat, the man could rise to every occasion. That spelled trouble. His benign question immediately aroused her suspicions. In her experience, there was nothing as perilous as seemingly harmless small talk, particularly coming from this man.

No matter how well cultivated his drawing-room manners were, nothing changed the fact that he was positively lethal, much more dangerous than any of her information made him out to be. She must tread carefully.

‘There’s not much to tell. I am a simple woman. You’ve already seen that I live a simple life.’ She tittered and stared into her tea cup. That would not be enough to put Stockport off, so Nora deflected his burgeoning inquisition with a tried-and-true trick. ‘I am sure it’s much more interesting to talk about you.’ In general, most men were always diverted by the opportunity to expound on themselves at large.

She’d forgotten Stockport was not most men. It was the second time in their association she’d made that mistake. The first time, she’d kissed him. She would do well to remember it. He wasn’t even half the men she knew. He had a category all his own.

He narrowed his remarkable eyes now and furrowed his brow, looking as if he struggled with an unseen puzzle. A frisson of alarm went through Nora. ‘What is it, my lord? Have I said something wrong? Oh dear, I’m always putting my foot in it.’ Nora wrung her hands dramatically, making a show of muttering her stupidity under her breath while her mind raced, trying to catch her error.

What had triggered Stockport’s reaction? He looked like a man who had heard or seen something familiar, but could not place it in context.

Stockport mastered himself. ‘No, you’ve done nothing wrong. It is just that your conversation reminded me of another I had not long ago. I assure you, it’s not what you said, merely how you said it. I see you’re finished with your tea. Come, stroll about the room with me.’

Nora stared at Stockport as if he had two heads. The spinster walking about the room with the Earl? She had not expected this, but then she hadn’t anticipated anything that had happened so far tonight. There was no way out of it, so she placed her hand on his sleeve and consented to the stroll.

Stockport kept up a stream of seemingly innocuous small talk. She supposed other women would find the singular attention flattering. She found it worrisome. ‘Before tonight, Miss Habersham, I knew two things about you. First, you live at the Grange. Secondly, your cook makes the best teacakes in town. Now I have discovered a third. You play an outstanding game of whist. I am sure there is more to know.’

‘I assure you, those are the sum of my attributes,’ Nora said as rudely as Miss Habersham might dare with such a man.

‘We shall have to agree to disagree on that point, Miss Habersham,’ Stockport said in nonchalant tones that left her unprepared for the dangerous words that came out of his mouth next. ‘Ah, we approach the verandah. Fresh air, Miss Habersham?’

The hair on the back of Nora’s neck prickled in forewarning. She had waited all night for the other shoe to fall and now it had.

Victory at last! He had the nasally Miss Habersham right where he wanted her—private and alone, where he could confront her with his growing suspicions. He had worked all night for this moment, suffering through endless hands of whist and meaningless village gossip.

It had been highly enlightening to watch the lady in question play so ruthlessly. She was a far better partner than her conversation at the table indicated, which served to support the growing pile of evidence that Miss Habersham did not simply know The Cat. She was The Cat.

The previously reticent Miss Habersham had not been so timid during cards. Over cards, Miss Habersham had demonstrated a tenacity that seemed out of character for her, but not for The Cat. The Cat and Miss Habersham had sharp tongues. The whiny spinster had found the spine on two occasions now to reprimand him when he pried too closely into her personal life.

There were other characteristics they shared as well. They both had those piercing ice-jade eyes. Beneath the frumpy gowns of Miss Habersham there hid a delectable figure to rival the one The Cat flaunted. Now it was his turn to have the upper hand. He would make The Cat squirm before he pounced.

‘I must apologise, Miss Habersham. I find that I have business we must discuss and I’d rather do it privately.’ He wanted to laugh while Eleanor fussed with her glasses, pushing them up higher on the bridge of her nose, doing her best to look discomfited by such male attention. Didn’t she realise the game was minutes from being over?

‘If you want to bring up the issue of security at the Grange again, I must stick to my initial position and decline your offer,’ she began with characteristic nervousness.

Ah, very astute. Stockport gave her points for quick thinking. One of the conversations he’d had with ‘Eleanor’ had been about security, unlike the conversation he’d held with The Cat yesterday.

‘I am afraid I have a slightly different topic in mind. What do you know about The Cat?’ Brandon said without preamble.

‘Why, only what I hear in town,’ Eleanor said. ‘Why would you ask such a thing?’

‘Your house hasn’t been touched. I find that odd,’ he pressed, not allowing himself to be gulled by the wide-eyed shock and the hand flying to her throat in horror at his question.

‘Neither has yours, I understand,’ she retorted archly. ‘Perhaps I should be asking what you know about The Cat?’

Brandon smiled. ‘My point, exactly.’ He leaned intimately close. Perhaps if he could fluster her, she would forget herself. ‘Miss Habersham, I do know quite a lot about The Cat. I thought it was time for us to share what we know.’

His plan to discomfit her was failing. Eleanor made a great show of her chagrin. ‘Are you insinuating I am harbouring a fugitive? Take me inside at once. I find this conversation very unseemly.’ She was all Miss Habersham. So convincing was her outrage, his instincts faltered. Had he guessed wrongly about her identity?

All the signs couldn’t be wrong. Brandon pushed onwards.

‘What if I don’t?’ Two could play this game within a game. There was no harm in it since Miss Habersham didn’t really exist. He was ninety per cent sure of it.

‘I would scream,’ she said in high dudgeon worthy of any thespian.

The other ten per cent of him almost believed her.

Brandon bowed in mock-surrender. ‘I doubt you’d do either, but things will be as you wish. I’ll escort you inside.’ He stepped aside to let her pass ahead of him, taking the opportunity to audaciously whisper in her ear, ‘When the night began I knew three things about you, Eleanor. Now I suspect a fourth.’ It would serve her right to let her stew over the possibilities of what he knew.

An hour later, Brandon let himself into Stockport Hall and lit a brace of tapers left on the entry hall sideboard for his convenience.

He walked to the study, letting his candles cast shadows on the walls. He peered inside. Disappointment swamped him. His light illuminated nothing but emptiness. He’d thought she would be here. He had made sure that Eleanor had left the card party before him, giving the masquerading spinster plenty of time to change guises and sneak into the mansion.

This was rich! The Earl of Stockport plotting an assignation with a thief. What depths he had fallen to if the highlight of his social calendar was a clandestine rendezvous.

It was the final stroke in the evening’s débâcle with Miss Habersham. Doubt was beginning to replace his earlier confidence. At the card party, Eleanor had used the same deflecting technique in their conversation that The Cat had used at the Christmas ball. It was proving to be a ridiculous connection.

He must be more affected by The Cat than he’d thought if he was seeing the elegant, stealthy Cat in the dowdy form of the village spinster. He’d been so certain of his instincts on the verandah.

Brandon reprimanded himself the length of the stairs. Still, he had been so sure! But he’d also been sure The Cat would keep her word and return his ring. It was after midnight. The promised day of arrival was gone. For a man used to being right, he’d been wrong about a lot lately.

Brandon pushed open the door to his sitting room. A fire burned low and warm in the grate, assuring him from its glow that the room was empty.

He strode to the low table holding a decanter of his best brandy. He poured a glass, making a mental note to have his valet fill it in the morning. He did not remember drinking so much of it, but apparently he had. The decanter looked to have poured a glass or two.

Brandon headed to bed, tumbler in hand, eager to put the evening behind him. He raised his glass to his lips and halted at the threshold of his bedroom in disbelief.

‘Hello, Stockport. I’d offer you a drink, but I see you already have one.’ Rich tones purred from the bed where The Cat reclined in semi-darkness against the pillows, clad in her customary dark garb.

Ridiculous elation buoyed Brandon. She had come! He tamped down his relief, determined to play it coolly while heat flared within him. ‘Don’t you ever knock?’

‘Occupational hazard.’ The Cat uncurled her long limbs and rose from the bed.

Brandon took a swallow of brandy, trying to ignore the effect The Cat’s sinuous walk was having on him as she crossed the room to stand before him. There was something different yet disconcertingly familiar about her attire, but his jangled mind was too busy focusing on her presence in his bedroom to place it. ‘What are you doing here?’

She held up the small pouch for him to take. ‘That should be obvious. I am returning your ring and something else that belongs to you. You should keep your money in a safer place.’ She patted the breast pocket of her jacket. Only then did Brandon recognise that the coat she wore was his.

His heart leapt in victory. All the chastisements his logical mind had whipped him with as he climbed the stairs faded. She had kept her word to return the ring and she had returned his jacket from the Christmas ball with his money still tucked inside.

Stunned, he stood there, dumb in amazement. The Cat was purring about an affront to her dignity. ‘Should I be flattered that you’re surprised to see me or should I be insulted? Did you think I wouldn’t keep my word?’

‘If I am surprised, it is over finding you in my bedroom. I am not used to women making free with my private chambers. It’s usually the other way around.’

His urbane scolding did nothing to daunt her. She stood mere inches from him, her low voice making him hard as she spun fantasies with her words. ‘I wanted to arrange something special for our last meeting.’

‘Last? Are you leaving?’ He hadn’t thought buying supplies for her needy would drive her out of town. He found he didn’t want her to go. Maybe there was time to cancel the orders.

She gave one of her throaty laughs and he discarded his irrational thought. ‘Of course not! I still have investors who need my particular attentions. But since you fail to play by my rules and announce Stockport Hall has been burglarised, I must spend my time elsewhere on more likely subjects.’ She ran a finger lightly down his cheek along his jaw line where late-night stubble was starting to grow. ‘I need the publicity.’

Her continuation of the robberies did not bode well for his plan to dissuade her from her criminal activities. ‘I thought I’d provided enough supplies for your families to last until spring.’ Brandon was thoroughly confused. He’d believed he’d kept her out of harm’s way with his purchases. Apparently, she was addicted to danger.

‘You did. But that doesn’t change the fact that plans for the mill are still going forward.’

‘No rest for the wicked, eh?’ he said with a flippancy he didn’t feel.

‘None, and I am very wicked.’ She stood so close to him now that the tips of her breasts pressed against his shirt. He wanted to forget the game they played over his mill. He wanted to throw her down on his bed and play an entirely different game, one that didn’t involve clothes or masks or secrets or politics; well, maybe sexual politics, he amended.

Brandon did not believe it was possible for him to get any harder and survive intact. He fully expected it to explode shortly. In a hoarse voice, he tried to turn the conversation down a neutral venue. ‘It’s foolishness to continue at this rate. You must slow down. Do you want to be caught?’

Her eyes glinted with mischief. ‘It depends on who is doing the catching.’ A nail lightly raked his chest where his shirt opened in a vee, causing him to shiver in aroused delight.

She continued, ‘I have no intentions of being caught by silly Squire Bradley and those nabob investors who have ponied up their pounds for the privilege of associating with you, my lord. I certainly shall not surrender to the pompous St John or that young braggart, Witherspoon.’

She smiled coyly at Brandon, making him feel that the cat had already licked the cream. ‘Tell me, my lord, haven’t you ever wanted to be caught? It can be invigorating with the right person.’

‘Yes,’ Brandon managed. They were no longer talking about catching The Cat. One moment they’d been talking about traps of one type and in the next were talking about traps of entirely another sort. An inappropriate sort. The sort that made him want to throw back the very proper damask cover on his bed and take her on the red satin sheets that hid beneath.

He groaned his lust as The Cat ran her nails down his chest. Her deft hands found their way inside his shirt to the hard planes beneath the fabric. Brandon sucked in his breath. Never in his intimate relationships had he been so stimulated and he had yet to remove his clothes.

‘You see,’ she whispered sensually, ‘it is nice to be caught.’

His groin swelled painfully. He wanted her to catch him. It didn’t take long for his thoughts to head in the reverse direction. He wanted to catch her in the manner she’d intimated.

His mind ran riot with all nature of exotic visions. He imagined a primal coupling among his scarlet sheets that would leave them both sweat-drenched and slaked. He imagined her sleeping and rumpled in the middle of his big bed, her dark hair fanned out against the crimson clad pillows. He imagined for a moment that The Cat and all her passion belonged to him alone. If he took her, it could not be otherwise. He was a man used to power and the responsibilities that went with it.

She stepped back and arched an eyebrow that both insinuated a dare and mocked his ardour. With languorous movements, she stepped away from him and took a chair, crossing her long, booted legs. ‘It’s clear from the look on your face, and dare I say “other parts”, that you think you are man enough to tame The Cat.’

Brandon’s blood was already hot. Her insouciant manner pushed him the rest of the way until he fairly boiled. It was time for this impudent wench to learn a lesson about what happened when she played with fire. ‘You need taming badly.’ He advanced towards her, hands on hips.

‘You think you’re that man?’ The Cat queried from her relaxed position in the chair, unmoved by his proximity.

He leaned over her chair, his hands braced on each of the arms. He inhaled. The scent of outdoor air with the tinge of winter on it still hovered about her. She hadn’t been there long ahead of him. ‘Damn right I am.’

‘Many men have tried and most have failed.’

‘I am not most men.’ He was impressed. She hadn’t flinched once.

‘No, you’re an Earl. There’s, what, roughly fifty of you?’ She rose from the chair, her movements forcing him to step back and aside.

She still wore his jacket. She made a great show of taking it off and laying it aside with all the care of a man preparing to engage in fisticuffs. ‘Well, my lord, are you going to come tame The Cat or stand there all night trying to figure out who the other forty-nine are?’

He saw her game and it was over. He would not suffer defeat twice in the same evening, nor would he be cowed into retreating by her brazen tongue.

‘I call your bluff. Consider yourself caught.’ He gripped her forearms and covered her lush mouth with his in a kiss that conveyed the power of his desire—a desire that both transcended the base need to be the sole possessor of such a wild creature and encompassed the primal need to protect what was his.

Indeed, whether she knew it or not, she was his—his equal in wit, in sensual gambits, in passion for a cause. In all the ways that mattered, she was his. His tongue probed the warmth of her mouth and she responded wholeheartedly, giving herself over to a complete embrace and, for once, letting him lead. Her body pressed against his. Her hands twined about his neck to pull him close. Her hips fitted against his jutting erection. At such contact, Brandon knew an elation as old as Adam.

Confident in himself and in her response, he moved his hand to rest in the provocative space between her breast and ribs. She sighed encouragement into his mouth and he cupped her full breast through the cloth of her shirt. Then he was falling backwards onto the bed, taking the weight of The Cat with him. In a flash he found himself pinned, The Cat looming above him, straddling him at midsection.

She changed her grip so that she imprisoned both of his wrists with her right hand. The charming smile on her lips persuaded Brandon to lay still and see where her shenanigans led. If she required the illusion of control, he could accommodate her whim.

With her free hand she pulled his cravat free and wound it around his wrists, her actions compelling her to stretch over his head so that her breasts were mere inches from his mouth. With a flick of his tongue, he could lick the nipples through the linen of her dark shirt. His sense of fair play startled him back to consciousness. He had not mistaken her motions. She was tying him up with his own clothing.

‘What are you doing?’ he inquired, a douse of sobriety cooling some of his ardour. He tried to make sense of the amusement playing across her masked features when she leaned back from her efforts.

The Cat leaned forward to sprinkle tantalising kisses against his jaw. ‘Have none of your other lovers ever invigorated you like this?’ Her hand drifted to his member and grasped it firmly, stroking him through the fabric, her thumb teasing its sensitive head.

‘I didn’t think so.’ The Cat laughed—a deep throaty sound men would pay handsomely to hear in the night. She tugged his shirttails from his waistband and popped the buttons of his shirt open to reveal his bare chest. Brandon knew his nipples were erect with need.

‘Still think you can tame The Cat?’ She took one erect nubbin in her mouth and laved it with her tongue.

Brandon moaned. If this was failure, he’d like to fail more often.

The Cat sat back on her haunches, smiling broadly. She swung off the bed and studied his long legs for a thoughtful moment. Then she began to tug. Off came his boots. Off came his trousers. His member stood at rigid attention for them both to see.

The Cat stepped away from the bed and walked backwards towards the door, her face still wreathed in her grin. ‘Consider yourself caught.’ She used his own words.

‘Where are you going?’ Brandon strained again to sit upright.

‘I’m going home.’

‘Going home?’ The implications slowly dawned on him. ‘Wait. You can’t leave me like this!’

‘Yes, I can.’ She fired her parting volley, ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to trust a smiling cat?’