The Gentleman Spy: A Guardian/Ward Historical Romance

Chapter 19

The easy way Beau had subdued that horrid man was all Emerald could think about on the ride back to Oakmoss. It had been done before she’d had a moment to sort out what was happening, and by a man who did such things as naturally as one might inhale and exhale. Shock, confusion, and disgust at such a violent display were all feelings which should have been roused in the breast of a gently bred female, but Emerald could conjure nothing beyond amazement. With his attention to his dress, impeccably manicured nails, and soft curls arranged with a deft hand, Beau had executed the manoeuvre with exquisite precision and ruthless brutality that surprised her.

She returned directly to the estate at a sedate pace, adjusting her ideas with each slow step. It was Emerald’s grand and faulty hope that by the time the sweep came into view, her mind would have sorted itself into some semblance of tranquillity and even perhaps an answer or two.

After giving a perfunctory smile and a kind word to the stable boy, the butler, and the footman, Emerald found herself at the door to her rooms without really knowing how she’d come to be there.

Her hand settled on the gold knob, the cool metal like ice against her hot palm. She hesitated, her gaze drawn down the corridor towards Beau’s door. There wasn’t a sound on the floor. Even her own breathing had halted, and with a quick look first left then right, Emerald released her hand.

Mindful that she was well on her way to Bedlam, she kept her steps light, but there was nothing to be done about the excessive way her heart thumped in her chest. Raising her hand, she rapped on the door to Beau’s room. She had not expected any response, having left him standing in the road in Ramsgate. Still, she pushed the door open, only a little at first, and whispered into the large room a soft ‘Hello?’ that went unanswered.

Emerald closed the door behind her and wasted no time in making a dash for his writing desk. She did not know precisely what she was looking for, only hoping it would make itself known when her eye landed on it. All she wished for were answers to the questions multiplying in her mind. There was a letter from a cousin and a sheet of paper with the title of a book she’d been speaking of written upon it. There was a volume of poetry that Emerald pushed aside, but a moment later she found her eyes once more resting on the title. Picking it up by the spine, she shook out the pages, the breath in her throat hitching as another letter fell to the desk. A letter signed by Monsieur Allard, but not written in French or English. The words were perhaps Spanish or Portuguese, but as she understood neither, all of it was nonsensical.

The letter was clutched in her hand when she heard Beau’s muffled voice in the hall, and panic seized her. Emerald spun around the room with wild eyes, seeking a place to hide herself. There were doors she could pass through, but she had no idea where they would lead. Just as someone pushed into the room, she scurried under the great mahogany bed. Even as a child she had never done such a thing, or she would have known what a terrible decision she was making. The space was confining, and if Beau sat upon his bed, she might well be crushed under his weight.

She heard his voice giving orders for a bath to be drawn, which Emerald found curious, until considering perhaps he wished to wash the day from himself before dinner. A footman assented, and then she heard the door close. A pair of polished Hessians passed in front of her, most of the boot hidden by the valence on the bed.

In the middle of her prayer that he did not accidentally sit upon her, Emerald paused to consider how he was home much earlier than she had supposed. His business must have concluded in a quarter of an hour, perhaps half if he had galloped home, whereas she had only walked. She was still considering this when Saunders entered.

‘Your boots, sir?’

‘The boots I can manage on my own, but I’ll accept your help with the coat.’

There was a little movement in the room and the sound of fabric rustling.

‘This is not so unlike the time in Denmark,’ said the valet into the silence.

‘Perhaps this time I can avoid taking a bullet. Or a blade.’

Beau’s tone was sardonic, but Emerald’s stomach clenched at the thought, and she couldn’t help wondering where he’d been injured.

‘Builds character.’ Saunders’s voice moved further away as he spoke, and Emerald imagined him going through one of the other doors to a dressing room.

‘Yes, I believe it ranks alongside helping others and keeping one’s word,’ Beau said dryly. She heard the creak of the chair as he sat. One boot dropped to the floor, then the other.

The valet murmured as he shuffled along the far side of the room. ‘In good company with honouring one’s responsibilities and duties.’

Under the bed, Emerald’s eyes went as wide as two dessert plates, and her breath caught in her chest while she waited for Beau’s reply. None was forthcoming, and the next voice she heard belonged once more to the valet.

‘Odd, is it not? How no one discusses the complexity and contradiction of such things—duty to family, duty to country, responsibility to dependents as well as oneself.’

‘Saunders.’ Beau spoke the name with cool authority and an unmistakable warning Emerald didn’t understand.

The reply, or rather rejoinder, was an exaggerated fawning, ‘Sir. If there’s nothing else?’

There was a pause. Finally, Beau said no and dismissed the valet. Emerald heard the grunt of the door opening and closing, leaving her alone with Beau in his room. He stood. The quiet shushing of fabric felt loud in her ears. His waistcoat dropped to the floor, followed a second later by his shirt. Her breath hitched, and although she’d been hiding her mouth behind her hand in an effort to quiet the sound, Emerald was certain he could hear it. The moment was dreadful in its intimacy, and her body burned from the inside out as if someone had struck the tinder box right in her belly.

Emerald turned her head and laid her cheek to the floor. With a shaking finger, she lifted a small bit of the valence a meagre inch—just enough to catch a glimpse. His sculpted back stole her breath away, not just the musculature of it, but the scars. Not heaps of them, but enough to know he had faced greater dangers than a belligerent drunk.

He was turning, but her body refused to release the valence and tuck herself away once more. Emerald was captivated—her eyes pinned to the sturdy black branches of the tattoo stretching up his arm and the dozens of smaller limbs reaching across his shoulder and over his heart to touch his collarbone. The leaves were growing sparse. They were shades lighter in colour too. An ode to the oak in winter. It reminded her of those framing the drive and scattered throughout the estate.

Sneaking into Beau’s room had proved a grave mistake. She would suffocate under his bed, unable to breathe when faced with the beauty of his body. The hard edges defining the muscles in his stomach and sinew carving out his ribs. The swell of his biceps and the thick veins running through them. Those arms had held her, protected her. Her mouth went dry with the memory of his heat, his hardness, against her on the forest floor. A light sprinkling of hair ran in a dark line from his chest down his stomach and disappeared into his breeches. She wondered how soft it would feel under her fingers if they were to graze along the ridges of his abdomen.

He was not big and broad and brawny, but sleek, lean, predatory. Emerald could feel his strength and vigour in her fluttering pulse, calling to her like a siren’s song.

There was an unfamiliar ache at the juncture of her legs. Emerald was too scared to squirm, but she rocked her hips a little side to side and pressed her pelvis against the ground, trying to find some kind of relief. The small movement made her limbs tingle. She did it again, stifling a breath when a little twinge of pleasure shot through her.

A door in the room opened. The sound startled her, and she bumped her head as she withdrew under the bed, grateful Beau’s attention was on the footman, notifying him his bath was ready. Beau disappeared, but to her horror and dismay, the door did not close behind him. A moment later she heard the slosh of water and a deep moan so articulate of sensual satisfaction she became hot all over. Her core throbbed, her palms were sweating, and down her back she could feel dampness soaking through the thin linen of her shift.

Emerald dragged in a shaky breath through her nose and exhaled it through her mouth in a futile attempt to regulate her erratic panting and calm the frenzy making every nerve in her body tender to the touch. She was unravelling and desperate to escape, but without knowing where the tub was positioned or how he sat within it, she would not dare to walk past the open door. There was nothing to be done, so she rested her forehead atop her hands, willed him to leave his room directly after he finished his bath, and then, without realising it, fell asleep.