Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

The Leighton Cluster scoundrels are, once again, up to no good.

~Newspaper clipping stuffed in a hat box under a countess’ bed

C ece crested the rise leading from the stable and halted in her tracks.

During the hour she’d been riding, chaos had apparently erupted on the Duke of Markham’s estate.

The party’s attendees were scattered across the lawn in varying states of dress and alarm. Baroness Bradley was slumped against the wall circling the fountain, her maid wiping her flushed brow with a sodden handkerchief. The Earl of Thandie-Roark was attempting to close his trunk by sitting on it, his thinning hair rising like shoots of wheat from his head. Carriages lined the drive in drunken disorder, groomsmen in a flurry as they assisted people inside the conveyances. The odor of burnt furnishings was a lingering but steady presence, as was the gray plume seeping from a lower parlor window. The sound of breaking glass could be heard in the distance.

Cece’s thoughts blanked in a moment of panic.

Josiah .

She was running before she knew it, elbowing through the crowd on the lawn, her riding skirt clenched in her fist. When she neared the house, an arm closed about her waist and yanked her into a shadowed recess near the kitchen entrance.

Into a hard body she recognized immediately.

Wrenching from his hold, she stared into Crispin’s soot-streaked face. His eyes were a sapphire glow, his mouth a grim slash. He was without coat or waistcoat, his shirt open at the neck, his sun-kissed skin dark against the creamy linen. He looked infuriatingly virile and on the edge of angry, the scar winding beneath his collar giving him the appearance of a brigand.

“I have him,” he said in a rough whisper, his gaze fixing on her mouth and holding before moving on.

“Josiah,” she breathed, nearly wilting in relief. “You have him.”

“He and his governess are in my carriage. Twenty minutes away, at least, that’s how long I’ve been looking for you. You have a loyal companion, I will say. I practically had to sell my soul to get the old bitty to agree to leave without you.” He dragged his fist over his cheek, leaving a black smear behind. “I’d protect the boy with my life, you have my word. You know this, even if she doesn’t.”

Despite the chaos, Cece was transfixed, a sturdy pulse of emotion rooting her where she stood. Crispin had safeguarded the most important person in her life when she’d not been there to do it. Long absent and faintly unfamiliar, happiness was a breathtaking sensation. It was as if a layer of ice cracked, allowing sunlight to caress her skin.

Speechless, breathless , she gestured inanely to the stable as the chaos continued to swirl about them. “A morning ride.”

He coughed into his fist and threw a hasty glance over her shoulder. “I’d forgotten about your penchant for riding, Countess. But now, we must leave.”

Without another word, he took her hand and guided her down a foot path leading away from the main drive .

Stumbling along, she yanked from his grasp. “What’s this? What is happening?”

Pausing only long enough to seize her elbow this time, he steered her to a waiting barouche parked in a private drive alongside the side garden. An elegant crest on the door of the vehicle confirmed it belonged to the duke. Waving off the coachman when he attempted to scramble down from his seat, Crispin hustled her inside the transport. Crouching to latch the step board, he then leaped in behind her as gracefully as a lion.

It must be something to move like the wind, she thought, dazzled despite her frustration.

Crispin settled himself in the seat across from her, a spent exhalation leaving him. He coughed again, a remnant of the asthma he’d sternly advised she never mention. Flicking the curtain aside, he gazed out, the mayhem on the estate a lessening drone as they entered the roadway. “Bloody poor planning,” he whispered, letting the drape fall into place.

Cece studied the interior of the vehicle as her suspicion grew. Her spencer lay in a neat fold in the corner, the battered portmanteau her grandmother had given her on her tenth birthday rested on the floorboard. Anyone who knew her, and this cad did , would understand it was a special piece of luggage not to be left behind.

She counted the many things wrong with the picture, most of which centered on the mischief taking up too much space in the tight confines of a duke’s barouche. “Did you start a fire to ruin my party?”

He tapped his knuckle to the windowpane three times before speaking. “Hildy’s bash, not yours, if we’re being precise about it.”

“Does she know about this?” Cece slumped back with a sigh, her belly sinking. “I thought I could trust her.”

Crispin groaned and massaged the bridge of his nose, refusing to answer.

She noted the silver threads running through his hair and the faint groves shooting from his eyes, changes time had wrought. The brawler was more handsome than the charming young man had been, a shocking truth.

A truth that vexed her to the bone .

She sat forward, daring him to defy her. “I repeat, does Hildegard Streeter know?”

His gaze sliced up, a deep, twilight indigo, intelligence banked hard behind it. “She does now, and she’s dying to tell you everything. To claim one spot of joy on this leaden day, I’ll strive to beat her to it. I’ll start with admitting Dash Campbell is a better writer than he is a criminal even if he’s based his silly books on such mischief. Asked to create an adequate but insubstantial blaze, he instead created a substantial one. Consequently, Streeter’s in a bad way with the wife at the moment, and the duke’s missus isn’t any happier. His parlor floor will definitely need to be replaced.” He frowned and picked at a rip in the carriage cushion. “At my expense. Not to mention the trouble of calling in a prime marker over that damned rock. Retired emissaries only have so many of those as we aren’t adding favors to the vault. Invaluable assets I don’t trade for gambits that legitimately go up in smoke.”

“Rock?” Cece collapsed against the squabs, pressing her fingertips into the velvet’s smooth nap to hold herself steady as the carriage took a fast turn. “I’m confused.”

“Better that than the truth of the thing,” Crispin said and closed his eyes. Was he planning to sleep without telling her where they were going?

“Despite this trouble, you promise me Josiah is safe.”

“He is. We’re only minutes behind them, headed to the same destination.”

The seconds ticked by, the thump of the carriage wheels striking the roadway the only intrusion. If Crispin wasn’t going to explain, she’d hound him until he did. “I’m baffled if you’d like to enlighten me. Talk of rocks and burnt parlor floors. Disorder truly does follow this group of people you associate with, doesn’t it?”

“Think hard, minx,” he murmured, his gaze returning to the window. “It will come to you.”

She frowned to hide her smile, straightening her spine as if she sat in her family’s pew in Northumberland. He believed her intelligent enough to figure this out—and he was right. Crispin Sinclair and Jasper Noble were at their core the same man. Her childhood friend had never treated her with anything but respect, had never conversed with her in a contemptuous tone, choosing to speak only of issues he presumed a weak female mind could comprehend. They’d held long discussions about literature, art, life .

Conversations held before—and after—attraction had snatched them up in its teeth.

Raindrops began to strike the roof of the carriage and trail lightly down the windowpane as they bumped along. Cece recorded the play of light across Crispin’s face, the hollows beneath his cheekbones, his full, pouting lips. The stubble he’d not had time to shave off his jaw darkening his skin to the point of piracy. As she stared, color rose on those high, hard cheekbones, his neck lengthening with his swallow.

Like it or not, he was beautiful.

Complicated. Intelligent. Courageous. So much so that England’s government had trained him to work for them and likely paid him handsomely for the risk. Too, hidden deep, he was kind . She’d never forget the bruises his father had inflicted upon him and the tormented look in his eyes for days after. Circumstance had changed him… but nature was nature. As a boy, he’d rescued a stray dog and volunteered to rebuild the sagging church roof. He’d given donations in secret to a family in need when his father had refused to help. He’d been kind to her, a young woman society steered clear of. If he’d staged a diversion to end the country party, even engaged the dubious Leighton Cluster in his plot, she merely needed to determine why .

Cece smiled, glancing at her slippers to conceal it.

It was really quite simple.

He wanted her, though he wished he didn’t. She felt sure he had no idea what to do about it.

Well, that made two of them.

“I’ll give this charade a week. With suitable arrangements at your home, of course. I assume that’s where we’re headed.”

Turning his head, his gaze slowly took her in. From the tips of the boots peeking from beneath her riding skirt, up her legs, her waist, her breasts, where he lingered, licking his lips. Her nipples pebbled in response, a sensation she worked vigorously to conceal. By the time he made it to her face, she was riveted, restraining herself from climbing in his lap. The pitch and sway of the carriage could shake them to glory, she well knew. The impulsive young woman would have done it, but that was no way to negotiate if she wanted more.

Because friends would be lovely—but ownership would be better.

As she’d let him own her. She wasn’t asking for anything she wouldn’t properly give .

After waiting an eternity for his reply—the man was certainly more patient than the boy—she extended her leg and nudged his calf with the toe of her boot. “Where?”

He tracked his gaze down her body this time, leaving a trail of heat behind. “Bloomsbury. You’ll have a bedchamber in my townhome, Countess. Respectable, on the up and up. As good as any baron would provide. You, Mara, and Josiah, guests like any other. Nothing more to it.”

She laughed, unable to hold it back. “You kidnapped me for nothing more than that?”

In a rare show of reticence, Crispin cracked his knuckles and knocked his boot to the floorboard. There was more he wasn’t telling her. “Actually, there’s a trivial dilemma, minx. A favor, of sorts, I wish to ask of you.”

A favor he needed of her ? What could he possibly—

“You hypocrite,” she whispered, realizing the only thing he would need aside from her body—and he wouldn’t ask for that in such a deferential tone. A kiss, he’d back her into the wall and take . Desire, why, he’d made her come while staring directly into her eyes, daring her to withhold her pleasure.

Forgery was all he would ask of her with reluctance.

Likely all he would ask, period. She’d suffered a moment’s insanity imagining it was anything else. “No,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

Scowling, Crispin rocked forward on the seat, his long legs invading her space and making her own tremble beneath her skirt. “It’s for Xander Macauley. Or our business, I should say. Thanks to you, they know I’m someone aside from Jasper Noble, leaving me to prove him a trusted associate. We need a signed document from a distillery partner in Scotland, a minor issue with a revision we’re making to the brewing process. We’re getting the approval, full disclosure, but between the travel to Oban, the submission of the papers to the solicitor in both countries, the process will take weeks. And the administrators check past signatures on contracts as policy, so we need a proper match. If we can submit here to get the ball rolling, that would be extremely beneficial. It involves a part on the Islington still, a piece Tobias and Dash figured out—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’ll do it!” She threw up her hands in defeat, struggling with the brutal sting that this was the only reason he’d staged this senseless diversion. She couldn’t very well forge a document at a house party, loupe in her pocket at all times or not. “Although, you devious blackguard, don’t for one second think I’ll forget how you urged me to leave this behind, only to have you come crawling to me when my skill suits your needs.”

In a show of annoyance, he moved in, cupping her chin and forcing her gaze to his. “Forge every damned document in London if you like if I’m there to defend you. Let them try to get through me to get to you . That’s the difference.”

The smoke-tinged fragrance drifting from his skin and the way his fingertips gently caressed her cheek drained away reason in slow, aching measure. Attraction rippled through her, along with that wondrous feeling of security—when she’d had little afforded her in this lifetime. Her father and her husband hadn’t cared enough to protect her when this man did.

Before she did anything she couldn’t take back, she had to know. “Was this farce merely a ploy to satisfy a business need? Starting a fire and ending a party merely because you need a signature?”

Crispin hesitated as his gaze skated away. Sitting back, his tells dove into play. His fist knocking out a rhythm on his broad thigh, his toe tapping against the scarred floorboard. Her heart warmed to realize what a poor poker player he’d make, at least with her. As a boy, he’d been the same, unable to hide his emotions from her.

Finally, he murmured, “He’s long gone, minx. Don’t expect him to show up ever again. The hope will destroy you.”

It wasn’t an answer. And it felt like a lie .

The falsehood sat between them with the past throbbing like a wound.

If this was a dare, she wasn’t in the mood to ignore it.