Chapter 26
Eamon never wanted this afternoon to end. He braced himself against the back of the armless chair they’d ended up on, buried inside Caro, who was twined around him.
There was no sound in the room but their mingled breath and groaned words.
Caro was bare except for the necklace shimmering on her throat. Eamon held her securely as he rocked against her, unable to thrust much in this position, but it didn’t matter. Caro’s warmth enveloped him, and her soft moans as she squeezed him made this chamber a fine place.
Eamon had imagined this scenario since the first day he’d encountered her here—a quick taste of pleasure on a chair, her skirts around them—but this was so much better.
He’d learned that Caro had an even deeper beauty than what he’d first seen, a heart she gave readily, a caring beyond anything he’d ever known.
Caro uttered a cry, descending into the newfound passion she was exploring with him, her face softening in desire and wonder.
“Duchess.” Eamon felt his release coming, and he fought it off to prolong this deep and satisfying pleasure. “You are gloriously beautiful.”
Caro’s answer was a little sob. “You are good to me,” she whispered. “So good.” The word died on another intake of breath.
“I’ll do anything for you, love.”
Eamon heard the words come out of his mouth, including the fateful love, but Caro only smiled at him, which made his world right again.
“Stone?” an incredulous voice rang out a few nights later.
Eamon paused on the steps that led into a hell called the Nines in St. James’s, McCormick and Wolfe on either side of him. Standing before them was a giant of a man with very pale hair and surprised pleasure in his wide blue eyes.
“Hell,” Wolfe muttered behind Eamon.
“It is you,” the blond man went on. “I knew it was. Was telling Monty here it was.”
The Viking, whose real name Eamon recalled was Percival Davison, beamed at them from his six-and-a-half-foot height.
Wolfe had said the man was bulging with muscle, and his assessment was correct.
The middle-aged gentleman next to him, who must be Monty, nodded at Eamon and his companions and made his relieved escape into the street.
There was nothing for it. “Davison.” Eamon stepped forward, hand out. “Been too long.”
“Call me what you used to—the Viking.” The man boomed a laugh and grabbed Eamon’s hand in a crushing grip. “I like that. No one else dares give me a moniker so friendly.”
Eamon decided not to remind the Viking of the days they’d spent healing from wounds taken in brawls the Viking had started. Eamon realized that the Viking had blurred his memories with nostalgia, until they’d all been friends who’d enjoyed a good tussle.
“Ever see Pebbly?” Eamon asked as the Viking turned to beam at Wolfe and McCormick.
“Eh? Who? Oh, Pollard. No, he absconded to the Continent ahead of his creditors.” The Viking bellowed another laugh.
“Married a pretty lady and bankrupted himself trying to keep her in jewels. Wolfe—good to see you again. Wolfe and I ran into each other a few weeks ago. We had a fine reunion, didn’t we? ”
Wolfe answered with something noncommittal, pointedly edging toward the entrance of the Nines, but the Viking wasn’t finished.
“And McCormick, still a beacon to ships at sea.” The Viking pointed to Hayden’s very red hair atop his tall body. “Thought you’d bunged off back to Scotland.”
“Not for long,” McCormick said, as though unoffended. “Took up with the Army, then London.”
“Well, we’re all together again,” the Viking concluded. “What are you doing here? This place has deep play. Very deep. Lost my little all, I’m afraid.”
Eamon had brought McCormick and Wolfe here after brandy at the Twenty-Fifth’s club and a conversation about Rudyard’s wrongdoings. They had enough information now, including what Caro and her friends had supplied, to expose Rudyard for fraud.
McCormick had suggested they adjourn to the Nines to celebrate. As a genius with numbers, he could take his small amount of pocket cash and win whatever he wished.
Eamon longed to return to Caro and tell her their plans—and possibly for other activities as well—but the hour was late. He agreed to accompany McCormick, along with Wolfe, who declared McCormick couldn’t be trusted to stay out of trouble.
“We’re only here for a small flutter,” Eamon assured the Viking. “Wonderful to have seen you again.”
“Hang about,” the Viking said as Eamon and friends finally glided in past him. “I’ll stay too. Maybe you can give me some pointers, McCormick. Always at the top of the class in maths, weren’t you?”
McCormick sent him a thin smile, but none of them could stop the Viking from marching back into the building with them.
The gaming room was at the rear of the house, filled with card and dice tables. Plenty of brandy and whisky circulated, as well as silk-clad ladies whose task it was to entice gentlemen to wager more coin.
McCormick knew how to choose games with favorable odds—as favorable as they could be in a gaming hell. That meant whist against three other players or piquet against one. Soon he was deep in a game of picquet with another like-minded sharp, focused on the cards in his hand.
Eamon towed the Viking, who wanted to hover at McCormick’s shoulder asking questions, to a table where a riotous game of hazard was taking place. Dice clattered, men groaned or cheered, and ladies hung on the arms of the winners, urging them on.
The Viking soon joined in the fray, throwing down his markers without compunction. Though he’d claimed he’d lost heavily, he came from a wealthy family, who’d likely pay any vowels he accumulated tonight.
Eamon had no interest in gaming and neither did Wolfe, who lounged against a pillar and kept an eye on McCormick. McCormick would probably win a nice sum and need his battle-hardened friends to help him take it home safely.
Tomorrow, Eamon would eliminate Cousin Rudyard as a threat to Caro and Leo.
Caro’s friends had been instrumental in the last few days in finding people willing to confess that Rudyard had cheated them.
Lady Carmichael had sent Eamon a long list, mostly of women who did not want their husbands to discover they’d trusted Rudyard with their pin money.
A few of them, Lady Carmichael declared, were angry enough to denounce him.
Wolfe and McCormick had volunteered to take the evidence they’d collected to a magistrate Wolfe knew was honest. An investigation would ensue to prove actual fraud, of course.
But even if the case never came before a court, Rudyard’s name would be blackened, his suitability as a guardian to a young duke questioned.
Eamon had even more permanent ideas about what to do with Rudyard, and things were already in motion.
For now, Eamon waited for McCormick to enjoy a rare evening of entertainment and daydreamed of Caro.
Eamon had never fallen in love before, beyond the brief but heated infatuations of youth. He’d never experienced the absolute joy he did whenever Caro entered a room, had never woken in the early morning eager to trudge London’s foggy and smoke-choked streets to begin his daily tasks.
His spirits always rose as soon as the Grosvenor Square house came into view, lifted still further as he greeted Singleton and handed over his wraps.
Finally, his happy anticipation was fulfilled when he heard Caro’s steps descending toward him, when he beheld her curved figure and beautiful smile as she bade him good morning.
Eamon would make certain he could wake up with her every morning of his life and kiss her good night in the dark.
“Stone?” a haughty and much-loathed voice spoke behind Eamon, shattering these pleasant visions.
He turned, hoping his hard countenance would make the man and the toadies who surrounded him go away, but Rudyard Berridge didn’t possess the sense to know when he wasn’t welcome. Either that or he simply enjoyed being an irritant.
“Berridge,” Eamon said coldly.
“Why are you not in Grosvenor Square, sniffing around Aunt Caro’s skirts?” Rudyard sneered at him, and the toadies imitated his expression.
Eamon faced Rudyard fully. “Have a care. I am not in the mood to listen to you disparage a lady.”
“Hardly a lady,” Rudyard drawled. “A countrified miss who got above herself. Landed herself a duke by spreading her dimpled knees.”
“I say, Berridge, steady on,” one of the toadies said, sounding shocked.
Eamon said nothing. He pictured himself seizing Rudyard by the collar and dashing his face into the nearest wall, pounding him until his nose was a bloody pulp.
Had they not stood in a roomful of gentlemen growing more and more interested in the argument, Rudyard would have already been a groaning heap on the floor.
But a dim voice beyond Eamon’s rage, the one that had ensured his survival all these years, told him that Rudyard was hoping to provoke Eamon to violence.
Was counting on it. Rudyard supposed his toadies would keep him safe while Eamon would either be hauled to Bow Street or subdued by the toughs who kept order in this hell.
If Eamon was arrested for assault, Rudyard would no doubt prosecute, and Caro would lose Leo. Rudyard could claim that Caro’s lover was a dangerous and savage man, and that Leo would be far safer with his own cousin, away from London and his unprincipled mother.
There was one solution to his dilemma, which Eamon was certain Rudyard would not like.
“You need to be taught manners, Berridge,” Eamon said calmly. “My seconds will call on yours in the morning.”
Rudyard’s mouth popped open and some of his bravado evaporated. “Are you challenging me to a duel?” he managed. “As though you are a gentleman?”
Eamon lifted his brows. “Are you refusing?”
“I do not duel with those beneath me.” Rudyard tried to stick his nose in the air and stroll away, but he was hemmed in by the interested crowd that had formed, and he couldn’t move a step.
“I will second,” Wolfe announced beside Eamon.