Chapter Two
Where a rake miscalculates.
You won’t be long then, will you, Merevale?
“I’ll show you long, Madam Mischief,” Ever muttered as he strode along the garden path, considering the various explosive ways he would react if he did not find Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook sitting in his Clarence, her lush bottom fastened to the velvet squab, hands folded in her lap. Exquisite lips closed.
Like she was seated for a bloody church service. That’s what he wanted, aside from the troubling suspicion he might want, well, her.
No lady of quality had ever assessed him thus—silent, thorough, like a piece of horseflesh up for purchase at Tattersalls.
Sadly, it had been more arousing than a lightskirt’s skilled perusal, which he’d experienced only once, at sixteen.
This evening’s review, however, had been an astoundingly cool evaluation from a chit of… what, exactly?
Ever halted and, with a spent breath, scrubbed his hand across his jaw.
Twenty-one, at least. He hoped. Still too great a distance from his thirty-seven, but nothing that bordered on depravity. Groaning, he brushed his hand over his half-hard cock, nudging it deeper into the folds of his trousers. Down, boy. Now is not the time.
And she isn’t the girl.
A grateful burst of moonlight illuminated the alley as he stepped into it, relief loosening his shoulders when Brick gave him a terse nod from atop the carriage. Got her.
Using something he’d learned in intelligence training (the composed person controlled the parlor), Ever paused before he reached the conveyance.
Smoothed a hand down his waistcoat and pulled a deep waft of London’s stench into his lungs.
Counted to twenty and back. Recited a few lines of Paradise Lost in Latin.
Reminded himself that this incorrigible miss was sister by marriage to not one but two business associates—Weston Whitaker and, somewhat regrettably, the Duke of Mercer—and that he needed friendships like these to prop up the ailing earldom he’d inherited.
Earning money in trade was how he would finally leave a profession that made a habit of sacrificing men like him, a career he’d chosen as a lowly second son expected to do nothing more, certainly nothing better.
But death changed circumstances in ways one did not anticipate, and as of twenty months ago, there he was, an unexpected earl.
Concerning this evening’s muddle, Ever wasn’t about to let a momentary lusty vibration work its way beneath his skin or his resolve.
He hadn’t three years ago, when a French agent slipped into his hotel room in Montparnasse and proceeded to divest herself of her gown before he could determine how best to end the intrusion.
And his determination then hadn’t been to fuck her.
Perhaps giving up his mistress in an effort to prepare for a new life—wife, children, Derbyshire, peace—wasn’t the smartest move, he decided as he swung the carriage door wide.
He’d wanted to enter the future without the dregs of the past clinging to him and had been the proverbial “good boy” for months now.
And what had it earned him? That damned Rake Review, listing accusations that would never be challenged because he’d played the drunken peacock so well for years.
The exposure aided his persona but did nothing for the man.
Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook had the nerve, Ever noted as a slice of moonlight shot through the door and struck her, to sigh softly as if he’d kept her waiting.
The glow only reinforced how very, very lovely she was, even in her ridiculous shepherdess costume.
Hair the color of wheat stalks in the fields surrounding his rundown country manor.
Eyes caught somewhere between amber and brown, changeable, he’d wager, depending upon her mood.
Her body petite but curvaceous, almost to the point of plump.
His preference. And her scent, light, compelling, and like the woman, not easily dismissed.
He wasn’t sure why—did anyone understand these things?—but something about her set off continued chemical charges in his gut.
“Your scowl is positively frightful, Merevale,” she murmured, telling him she found him anything but. “And it’s been in place since the instant I met you.”
At that moment, a brief rush of panic swept through him. He was acting like Everard, agent of the Crown, not the deliberately unimpressive man he’d worn like a second skin for years. That Tipsy fellow.
“Do you know what a dire situation this could become, should you be seen attending what is largely a gathering of fast society, with a few dregs from the upper tier thrown in?” he asked, adding a slight slur as he staggered into the seat across from her and her chaperone, a slumbering maid he’d employed two months ago at the behest of her cousin Brick.
A debt that, with her silence, had just changed hands.
Isabella traced a grimy streak on the window as the carriage rolled down the alley.
Predictably, she hadn’t drawn the shades as requested.
“Of course, I know,” she whispered, sounding forsaken and reminding him of his sister, Alice—a sympathy trap he was not falling into.
“What do you think is hammered into every young woman’s head from the time she’s out of leading strings?
Propriety, marriage, babies. Watercolors.
Proper tea service. Pianoforte. Since the predicament, as my family calls it, I’ve been strictly minded. And reminded of my obligations.”
Ever arranged his long legs as best he could without touching her or his drowsy domestic, grateful he lived close to Weston Whitaker and that the ride would be brief. “What predicament?” he asked, though he could well imagine.
“I used to have a purpose.” At his answering silence, she pinned him with a bold look, her tawny eyes glistening.
He did rather admire her cheek. “I’ll tell you a little secret, my lord, though I realize I shouldn’t.
I provided the Brazen Belle with information from time to time.
My embroidery projects gained me access to homes, you see. ”
He caught the laugh too late, his hand lifting to his mouth after it had already broken free.
“Don’t you dare, you scalawag,” she whispered, darting a glance at his now-snoring maid.
“It was invigorating to be something aside from nothing, which is what society has us be. A man couldn’t possibly understand.
Certainly not one who’s a wastrel, destroying every opportunity granted his gender.
” She slumped back, her slender shoulder knocking the carriage wall as they sped through another dank London night.
Flashes of light skimmed the sleek planes of her face, fascinating despite his resolve to overlook them.
“That’s why I wished to attend the celebration you held after being selected April’s rake.
When I marry, my being part of the Review will be snuffed out like a candle’s flame. Even to the select few who know of it.”
He leaned into the narrow gap separating them, sending her back into the squabs with a hushed breath. “Did you set me up? Secure my inclusion in the most infamous gossip column ever written?”
Her lips parted, a low laugh slipping neatly beneath his collar to glide down his chest. “You set yourself up, Tipsy Trentham.”
Resting back, Ever dipped his chin. Touché. He loathed the monikers and the false persona, but he couldn’t argue with fact.
“I had nothing to do with it,” she added after a charged moment, where his mind had gone down nebulous paths as his gaze traced the curve of her breast beneath dove-gray bombazine. “After the incident, I left that position.”
Position, he thought, keeping his amusement to himself this time.
This chit was trouble, just as he’d imagined. Poor Weston Whitaker, forced to manage her. And the sorrowful Duke of Mercer. Alice had never caused Ever this much grief. She cared nothing for position or purpose, thank God.
Isabella plucked at her lace cuff, her gaze flicking to the maid, then back to him.
Her eyes truly were a glory, a nimble golden brown he longed to dive into.
They shimmered like the surface of the pond behind his country manor.
“I’ll confess, I have a new endeavor to keep my mind sharp.
One a bit outrageous”—she held up her gloved hand—“but not ruinous.”
Ever exhaled softly, wishing he possessed the will to fix his attention on the misted window and ignore her altogether. Reaching into his coat pocket, he withdrew a flask of water, one of his work accessories. “Do tell.”
Eyeing the flask with disdain, Isabella reached to tug the leather strap that steadied the window shade, letting it snap back into place.
In his line of work, he’d found fidgeting came just before the grand revelations.
“As I mentioned earlier, I embroider, though my latest enterprise involves…underthings. Garters. Stockings. Decorated with playful mottos in whitework or silk floss. The pieces are quite inventive, quite lovely.”
“Garters,” he repeated flatly, his mind spinning with ribald images. Suddenly, he longed for brandy and gallons of it. Almost as much as he wished to know whether she wore inventive underthings beneath her appalling costume.
Her chin lifted as her gaze narrowed. “They’re sold discreetly through a milliner.
Occasionally through a lady’s maid. The sort of item no one admits to buying, and no one explains receiving.
I’ve made a tidy business of it, ten pounds last month.
Plus the other,” she murmured, her attention sliding away to the street beyond.
Ever gave a short, incredulous laugh. The brass tacks on this chit. “I’m listening.”
Daring him—daring them both—her gaze returned to his. “A select client. The Velvet Court, an establishment in Covent Garden. You likely know of it. The girls prefer something well made.” She tapped her knuckle against the windowpane, three solid pops. “Something that lasts.”
He knew of the Court, an extremely upscale establishment, though it hadn’t existed during his own education in such matters. “I’m guessing your family isn’t aware of this exchange? What they might easily title ‘predicament number two.’”
Her cheeks flushed, a clear tell in the lamplight, and he found himself enjoying this exchange more than any he’d had in years. How damned dangerous.
But before Madam Mischief could further engage him, or he her, a thump struck the side of the carriage, followed by a shouted oath from his man perched atop it.
The Clarence rumbled to a halt with an awkward jolt Ever knew Brick hadn’t orchestrated.
He tossed the flask aside, reached into the concealed drawer beneath the seat, and extracted a pistol.
“Stay,” he growled, thrusting the weapon into her hand and dropping every pretense of being intoxicated, befuddled, or anyone Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook believed him to be. “And if it isn’t me or Brick who returns, shoot first and worry later.”
“What about you?” she asked, her arm trembling but her eyes steady, her concern sending a pang to his heart, ridiculous to the extreme. It proved how soft he was becoming, how badly he needed to be out of risky businesses. He no longer had the appetite for a life measured by survival.
“I’m well equipped,” he whispered, his pulse thumping, not a routine occurrence since he rarely had anyone to worry about but himself.
Thankfully, her chaperone had woken and, being a durable rookery girl, brandished a knife slipped from her boot. Madam Mischief faced him, pale but determined, raising his esteem a thousand notches. Most society creatures would have fainted at the first sign of trouble.
When he climbed from the carriage, his own blade in hand, he found a predictable inner-city disturbance: a robbery organized by a desperate, inept set of characters.
He and Brick, who had abandoned his post to confront the two assailants, handled the matter without much difficulty, though Ever was unquestionably tired of pressing a weapon to someone’s throat and feeling one at his own.
“Look at that wee one run,” Brick said with a gusty laugh.
He backhanded the sweat from his temple and fingered the rip in the shoulder of his coat.
“Though he handled his dagger with keen skill, didn’t he?
Close to cutting me once. Them that has naught to lose are the ones to be scared of, I always say. ”
“It’s this damned conveyance.” Ever jammed his knife into the scabbard beneath his coat and glanced around to ensure no one else approached.
The lane lay deserted and mist-laden, the sound of breaking glass carrying from somewhere down the way, not a place to linger long.
“They see the Merevale crest and think, a nob, oh, I can take him. I’m going to have it painted over. ”
“Rather a nice bird in flight, it is. Very regal.”
Ever rolled his shoulder, wondering what he’d done to his back in the scuffle. It ached like the devil. “My grandfather claimed it was a falcon, but it looks like a malnourished goose to me.”
Brick crossed to the door, but before opening it, turned to Ever.
“I don’t want to add to the evening’s collapse, me lord, but the bothersome bit watched the entire brawl through the window.
As we say in the trade, I reckon you blew your cover.
You laid the one down with your fancy boot on his neck. ”
Ever swore and stepped into the street, only then realizing he was dizzy. Bracing his fist against the carriage, he bent forward, head hanging. Drops of blood struck the cobblestones in rapid succession, merging with London’s eternal grime.
“I think the wee lad got me,” he whispered as his vision drained away.