Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“ S martest thing you’ve done yet, Devlin. Attaching yourself to that one.” His friend nodded in a direction beyond Philip’s shoulder, but Philip didn’t have to turn to know she was near.
With his excellent peripheral vision, it was easy to track her without appearing to, and besides that, her crimson costume made her stand out. But it was likely he would know Melisende’s location even if he stood blindfolded. He could sense her, a combination of heat and scent, a heightened awareness no doubt brought about by extreme sexual attraction.
His mother had always told her girls some folderol about how they would simply know when they had met a compatible partner. It was a knowledge acquired outside the customary senses, the way she spoke of it, but a calm certainty nonetheless. Of the men of acceptable rank, birth, and personal fortune—for those were the only men allowed near his sisters—one would identify himself through instinct alone as her mate.
Philip feared he was experiencing that with Melisende.
“It’s been an interesting few days,” Philip responded coolly.
Ralph Plimpton snorted. He’d been an easy target for information once, a knight’s son with an affection for the gambling tables and the latest fashions, and shockingly loose of lips when plied with small amounts of alcohol. His father had bought him a commission in some standing militia, a position that allowed his son the posture of military rank but kept him close to home and not in the fetid Americas where he might contract tropical fever in the Indies or, further north, become a target for a rebel patriot taking aim at a lobsterback. Now that hostilities were over, Plimpton could brag that he’d been a part of the action, little knowing he’d been an unwitting player in helping North’s cabinets track militia strength and speculate about how much manpower they might gather to ship overseas and bring the colonists to heel. Moreover, Plimpton still thought he and Philip were friends.
“How far will she go to gain British allies?” Plimpton waggled his brows in a suggestive way.
Philip straightened his back. “Do you mean, how much money will she pay to men of fortune who might supply her with an army to take back her country?”
“Yes, that.” Plimpton gave him a sly smile. “How much coin will she put out?”
“I wouldn’t advise you to try,” Philip said through gritted teeth.
“Oh ho, thus the wind blows! You’ve made a claim to exclusivity then?”
“I have put myself in the lady’s service, if that is what you want to know,” Philip answered.
He didn’t intend for his voice to emerge as a growl. He intended to be nonchalant. Unaffected. But Plimpton, eyes widening, took a step backward, stumbling a bit in the large leather boots he had donned as his Cavalier costume. “Good Lord, you’re head over spurs! My condolences, man!”
“I’m not any—” Philip began, then forgot his protest as a new set of guests entered the hall. “I’m needed. Excuse me.”
Melisende stood talking to what Philip guessed to be a Faerie Queene, a woman sumptuously piled with damask silks, pearls and jewels, and a headdress adorned with foliage and birds—stuffed, he hoped, and not live. If the lady was a round, shivering heap of diamonds, Melisende beside her was a slender chain of rubies and gold. The sleeves of her outer robes were a transparent gauze, showing the elegant shape of her arm beneath. She smelled of cloves and neroli, earthy, exotic. He placed his hand at her elbow and saw a shudder play across her neck, as if his touch affected her as much as it did him.
“Highness. Did you see who just entered? I heard them introduced as the Emperor and Claudius and his wife, Messalina.”
Melisende’s gaze drifted to the doorway of the larger parlor, and she went still.
“Messalina.” The Faerie Queene was Lady Cranbury, judging by the cackle in her voice. “Is that where your name comes from, dear?”
“No, madam, I was named after the Queen of Jerusalem. A ruler of the twelfth century, so, long ago.”
“Not in her own right.” The Faerie Queene sniffed. “No woman is allowed to rule in her own right, is she.”
“Some do,” Melisende murmured.
“But not if she submits herself to a man.” Her ladyship’s narrowed gaze fell on Philip. “Not ever then.”
“Walk with me, highness,” Philip said, hoping he had tamped back his irritation with Lady Cranbury more effectively than he had restrained himself with Plimpton. No one would consider him worthy of winning Melisende. No one should.
“The Aldthorpes?” Melisende questioned, leaning close so as not to be overheard.
“I believe so.”
“I wonder if he knows his book is missing.”
“I consider it time to begin our search,” Philip said. “I know you had some coordinated plan, but I believe we’d both best go now.”
Melisende debated a moment. He wondered what thoughts were passing through her head. Behind the golden chain of her veil he saw only more glinting gold, the lights deep in her eyes. “Then let us go.”
He held her hand as they made their way through the back parlor and through the stand of potted ferns that shielded the entrance to the Count’s library. The gesture wasn’t as provocative as some of the touches already taking place between guests as men grown bold beneath their disguises made advances to the lady of their choice. For good reason those of staid sensibility decried the topsy-turvy nature of the masquerade, when a commoner could dress as a queen and a rogue could steal a kiss—or more—from a maid.
Thinking of stealing kisses—and more—from Melisende would thoroughly distract him from the purpose. Yet the cling of her gloved palm to his was the most sensual experience Philip had had in a while, and he’d been caressed, just in recent memory, by a high-class courtesan who was kept by a Scottish Lord of Parliament; the housekeeper and mistress of the Duke of Richmond, current Master-General of the Ordnance; and Florence Maplethorne, innocent that she was. But the confidence reposed in him by Melisende’s trusting touch, her fingers entwined with his, struck him deeper than the cooing words and embraces from the others, even the practiced strokes of the courtesan.
Philip was known among Fox’s men as the one who never lost sight of the mission, not even in the heat of a fight. But for the first time, he couldn’t seem to focus on his goal, or even recall what the goal was. Locate a book? Determine whether the grand duke and his daughter were allies or threats to British power? Protect her?
The instinct his mother spoke of, the place of knowing, told him the mission was to make this woman his.
But that might also be his libido speaking.
He swept a branched candlestick from a table as Melisende drew him into a short hall toward a closed door at the end. Count Voronsky’s library was one of those rooms more given over to the display of curiosities than of books, which would have come with the rented house. Melisende took a candle and moved swiftly about the room lighting the wall sconces and candelabra. As the room illuminated, Philip swept a quick, assessing glance over the shelves of leather-bound volumes, the glass-fronted cabinets, and many tables displaying some artifact or another.
His gaze fell on the desk, an eight-legged piece in the style of the bureau Mazarin, with several banks of small drawers, all with their own lock.
“Devil it,” he said. “I was hoping for a cylinder desk and only one lock on the lid. Perhaps the same key fits all of these?”
Melisende glanced at it, too. “There’s not enough room to sit at that desk. What is the purpose?”
“This was the style a hundred years ago for a nobleman who would be wearing his sword. Frequently in the way, swords are.” Philip went to the first row of gold-edged drawers and tugged. “You sit alongside and only fit one knee beneath it. My father uses his for a dressing table.”
Melisende left him at the desk and went to the first row of bookshelves, the train of her robe sweeping lightly behind her. Music from the harp and the enthused chatter of the guests drifted into the room, reminding Philip that exposure could happen at any moment. He tugged harder at a drawer. Locked.
“I’ve never been in here. The count always entertains us in the back parlor, and asks me to play the harp. I’ve never seen his library. This is a quite a Kunstschrank .” Melisende paused to examine an item under glass.
“A what?” Philip tried the next row of drawers, with the same result.
“What is the English word? A cabinet of curiosities. This looks like a tiny mermaid skeleton. And over here, a unicorn horn.” She regarded the long, spiraled horn mounted on the wall, below a painting in the flat medieval style and a tray of shells pulled from the sea.
“We don’t have much time, Melisende. Do you perchance have a hairpin you could loan me?”
“I thought you knew five ways to crack these things.” She mocked him, but she slid her hands beneath her cap and the long veil covering her back, and Philip watched in fascination as a dark curl descended over one shoulder, a red gleam buried in the deep brown shades.
In the candlelight and the quiet, sheltered room, she was a nymph of the forest, a goddess ensconced in her boudoir. He willed her to go further. Remove more pins. Set aside the headpiece and let him see her face with her masses of hair falling about her shoulders. Remove the caftan and show the daring costume beneath, the bold-trimmed bodice that outlined her beautiful breasts and skimmed her waist, the gauzy pantaloons that clung to her long, strong legs and drew the eye toward?—
“Will this do?” She held the silver shard, as long as his finger, beneath his nose.
“Ahem. Yes. Thank you.”
Control yourself, man. He set to work on one of the bottom drawers. Pity Voronsky wasn’t one of those careless types to lock his desk but leave the key atop it, certain none but those he admitted would dare enter his private space. The Russian diplomat had something to hide.
“It’s not here.” Melisende, done skimming the books, turned to the shelves with their displays of rocks and gems, stuffed creatures of every variety, ancient coins, and specimen jars.
“ Verdammt ,” she muttered. “You’re a man. Where would he have put it if he knew I were coming?”
“We’ll try his dressing room next, and his bedchamber, if we must,” Philip said. “But it’s in the desk. I’m sure of it.”
“How can you know?”
“I just do. I have a sense for these things.”
“Like a woman’s intuition?” She scoffed, approaching the desk.
“Stand over there, if you please. Guard the door. You have a habit of making my senses scatter.”
She paused. Philip focused on the lock and the gratifying click as it yielded. A roll of banknotes, British pound sterling, and a pile of silver rubles. Some ledgers in characters he couldn’t read, he assumed Russian.
“I do what to your senses?” she asked, and the tone in her voice had shifted to something he didn’t recognize.
“Nothing. Never mind. Come here after all and tell me what this ledger says. Perhaps he’s recorded payments to thieves, or blackmail of British politicians.”
She rustled toward the desk as Philip went to work on the next drawer. The scent of neroli, warm and rich and evocative, teased his nose.
“Perhaps household accounts—no,” she said in surprise, “this appears to be his salary. He doesn’t receive nearly as much from the Russian government as I would have expected. My father and I, as exiles, live on more.”
Philip lifted his gaze to hers. “Then he has a motive to seek a treasure, wouldn’t you say?”
Her lips tightened. She hated the thought that this man she had trusted, a friend of her family’s, would betray her. He saw the wounded expression about her eyes, the downturn of her lips, painted a carmine red to match her costume.
She circled the desk to his side and dropped to her knees, pulling off her cap with its golden chains and long veil behind. Her hair shone a dark auburn in the candlelight, a silver gleam amid the luscious mass as she pulled out another pin.
“There is no treasure,” she said in exasperation. “There is only a document of no use to anyone but a member of my family. Where did this ridiculous notion emerge that my ancestors have hidden gold somewhere?”
“Why do people search for Ali Baba’s treasure or the site of legendary Troy? Because these ideas take hold of the imagination. It is not just the riches a man pursues. It’s the joy of discovery also. Of finding something precious, untouched, overlooked by others. Of being the one to reveal that wonder to the world.”
She paused, her hairpin inserted in the tiny lock of the drawer before her, and stared at him.
“Is that why you are a spy? The joy of discovery?”
“Part of it, I suppose.” The next drawer held writing materials, quills and ink pots and a stack of vellum. Why lock up writing materials? “I’ve never deeply examined my motives, to be honest. I do like discovering things, though I am an informant, not a spy.” He shoved the drawer closed and began on the next. “A spy works to benefit himself. I work to uphold a cause I believe in. Keeping the people I believe should be in power holding the reins of government. Securing British influence and rule. Keeping our islands safe from invasion from a foreign threat.”
“Which is why you watched me,” she said dryly. “A stack of neckcloths?” Her brow furrowed. “Why lock up a stack of neckcloths?”
“Look beneath them,” Philip advised, struck by a sudden inspiration.
She pulled the squares of pressed, clean white linen from the drawer. “Nothing.”
“It could be a false bottom to the drawer.” Why hadn’t he realized this earlier? He crouched beside her, inhaling that scent that made his head spin, logic fleeing. “There will be a tab, or a clasp, or perhaps a spring or?—”
“I have it.” She yanked out the thin panel of wood and lifted the pages, scanning them quickly. “A different set of ledgers. Hmmm, these would appear to be blackmail payments. But is he collecting, or paying?”
“Search the other drawers. The key is here. I know it.”
The false bottom beneath the writing utensils held a set of papers, letters. The drawers below it, a man’s shirt and a jeweled brooch entwined with a lock of hair. The drawer next to it, a woman’s shift and a silver set of fobs and seals, including one with the coat of arms of a noble house. Philip didn’t recognize the arms at a glance. Were these the items Voronsky was using for blackmail? Just how far did the man’s tentacles extend?
“Philip,” Melisende breathed. “It’s here.” She lifted a small quire of papers, veined brown with age, the vellum crackling as she thumbed through the pages. “This is it. The key.”
She leaned toward him as he leaned toward her. It was without a doubt the document they sought. One diagram provided the symbols, with text written alongside in what he presumed was Ladin. Another small map, this one of a room; small paragraphs of crowded text; and one page in Latin, a language he knew.
“By order of Ferdinand, by the Grace of God Emperor of the Romans, King of Bohemia, Hungary, and Croatia, Archduke of Austria, etc.—” he skimmed the lengthy paragraph of titles— “does invest the bearer of this document with sole and unchallenged rule of the kingdom of Merania, in the County of Tyrol, to be held…but it isn’t complete. This isn’t the actual patent, Melisende—it doesn’t have the seals and such of an official decree.”
“It’s a copy,” she whispered. “An excerpt. It means that the original existed once, and might still exist. The map explains where it is hidden, and this key describes exactly where to find it.”
Her eyes, when she lifted her gaze to his, were wet with tears. Tears, from this indomitable woman.
“Philip,” she said again. “It’s real. The document that can restore my father to his place as the grand duke of Merania. I was right .”
He would not be able to recall, later, if he had lowered her head, or she had raised hers, or if they moved together following a pull as strong as the moon on the tide. But the distance between their faces disappeared, and a roar of pleasure, of triumph, of sheer need moved through Philip as Melisende’s lips met his.
Kissing Melisende was elemental—essential. It made more sense than anything else in his life. Her scent wrapped around him like the veil of her costume, blanketing every sensation that was not connected to her. The soft, firm pressure of her lips moving beneath his, answering his demand, making claims of her own. Her body touching his, her luscious breasts pressed to his chest, those breasts he dreamed of kissing. Her dark tresses fell over his hands as he slid his arms around her, and the sweep of soft hair, the low moan in his ear, the heat of her silken skin stirred him near to madness. He needed to possess her completely, all of her, and know he had her utter surrender. The thought was a pleasure of its own, that he had this proud, baffling, untouchable woman in his arms. And she was touching him.
She trailed her hand down his back, lighting a fire along his spine. Her soft palm against the back of his neck burned. He dove into her mouth, tasting lemon and sugar and rum and some sweet nectar that was all her own. The taste of her pummeled his restraint, leaving nothing but victorious need. He arched her backwards, needing, requiring the length of her pressed against him, each glorious curve and hollow of her magnificent body. She yielded, falling back onto the desk, pulling him with her. Her hands moved everywhere, as if she wanted to touch all of him, all at once. She lifted a leg, cradling his hips against hers, and the bolt of pleasure that shook him at the contact blanked his mind.
A thump sounded behind his ear, perhaps the beat of his heart. Crazed with passion. Then Melisende broke her mouth away from his and screamed.
A knife blade protruded from the top of the desk, right beside their heads. In the frozen moment before reaction set it, the man holding the knife jerked it free and raised it again.
“I’d leave ye to play yer three t’one, guv, but she’s atop my book,” the man said. “So move ’er.”
Philip reacted out of sheer instinct. He shot an elbow into the man’s midsection, and the attacker jerked forward with a grunt, the knife falling. Melisende rolled away, but the thick skirts of her caftan were slow to roll with her, and the knife point pierced the fabric. Philip pushed her off the desk with one hand, to the sound of rending cloth. He clamped his other hand around the handle of the knife, atop the attacker’s.
The man was shorter than Philip, but heavier. A lock of greasy hair fell over rough features scarred by pox. His canvas jacket carried the scent of the docks, and some of the filth from that area. He balled up his fist and slammed it into Philip’s midsection: a brawler, not a gentleman.
“Ow!” The man yelped, shaking his hand after meeting Philip’s breastplate. “Thas real iron!”
“So is this.” Philip drew his sword.
The man’s eyes widened, his gaze darting about. He lit on Melisende, on the other side of the desk, which stood between her and the door.
She stood on the balls of her feet, ready to fight, or run, her eyes trained on the intruder. And she had the book in her hand.
“No,” Philip said.
She didn’t listen. As both men watched, she stuffed the book into the bodice of her outfit beneath the red silk fabric hemmed with thick embroidery of gold. Philip glimpsed an olive-skinned, oh, so vulnerable breast.
“You’ll never get it,” she taunted their attacker.
“That I will. An I won’t mind unrigging ye to get it, chick-a-biddy.” As if he were a cat, the man leapt atop the desk, then crouched to jump.
Rage speared along the pathways where Melisende’s touch had, moments ago, raised a fire. Philip swung his sword and sliced across the man’s rough waistcoat, opening a neat line. The man shouted and stumbled to the floor.
“Put away yer toy, guv. Ye’ll hurt yerself,” he sneered, holding up his hands, blade poised. He knew how to use it.
Philip advanced. “Who sent you?”
“No time for talkin’, guv. Got a job to do.”
He was fast, darting around the desk just as Philip anticipated the move. Philip kicked the bureau over. The man merely laughed and skirted the flying legs, leaping at Melisende.
She fell back behind a display and threw the glass case it held at him. “Voronsky? Did he hire you? Did he set you here to watch us, to wait?”
Her pursuer threw up an arm, deflecting the case, which thudded to the floor and cracked apart. A rock rolled across the carpet, dark and pocked.
“Voronsky could have locked us in here if he wanted to trap us. And he already has the key. This one came from somewhere else.” Philip vaulted the fallen desk, putting himself between Melisende and the other man. She breathed heavily, erratically, and he guessed at her fear.
“I wants the book, and thas all,” the man grunted. “Hand it over and no need to slice yer article to ribbons.”
Philip lifted his sword, determined not to let his hand waver, though the thought of Melisende hurt made his insides curdle. “Touch her and die.”
He advanced, but this man was no mere dockworker. He danced away from each attack as if he guessed Philip’s reach exactly, and was luring him further from Melisende with every step.
“Fine looking cheese toaster ye’ve there,” the man sneered. “Shame ye don’t know how t’use it.”
“I know how,” Philip said through gritted teeth. He shouldn’t let the man rile him; he knew that. But this prig meant to hurt Melisende. Red ringed his vision, and it wasn’t because he was tracking her with the corner of his eye, ensuring she stayed shielded behind another display.
“Gimme the book, luv, an I won’t hurt yer sweet heart,” the man growled. “Stay as ye are, an I’ll carve’m like beef in front o’ye.”
“If he doesn’t run his sword through you, I will,” Melisende said, but her voice shook. “Philip?—”
She feared, not for herself, but for him, and for some reason, that made his rage explode. Philip lunged, his blade aimed at the man’s heart. No more did he care to stop him; he meant to drop him where he stood.
The man anticipated him. He ducked beneath the attack and bowled straight into Philip’s gut. The blow knocked the breath out of him. The man flung him aside and Philip let go his sword, which slid along the polished floor outside the carpet. Melisende shrieked again. Philip rolled to his feet in time to see the man push aside another display case, which cracked on the floor at Philip’s feet. He twisted to the side, fighting for breath, too winded to let his rage emerge in a growl as the man fell upon Melisende.
She kicked and fought, then screamed as the knife rose and fell toward her. His sword was too far away; the rock lay near his hand. Philip grabbed it and stumbled forward. Melisende fell to the floor, the other man atop her, his weight across her midsection pinning her legs. She wrapped her hands around his throat as he tore at her bodice, the sound of rending fabric accompanied by his grunt of satisfaction.
Melisende’s eyes flared briefly as she spotted Philip rearing above them. Then he brought the rock down with all his might against the man’s temple.
He fell like a brick and slumped to the side with a slight sigh. The knife slipped from his hand.
Melisende, with a short cry, held out her arms. Philip pulled her to his feet and into his embrace.
“Philip. Philip.” She tucked her head against his shoulder like a child, her shoulders shaking with relief.
“Ssh. You’re safe. It’s over.” He ran his hands along her back and his fingers came away wet. Blood.
He grasped her shoulders and held her, sweeping his gaze over her. “Where are you hurt?”
“I cut my arm when I fell, I think. And the knife…” She held a hand clasped to her shoulder, above her heart, and her eyes were wide with terror.
No. No, dear God, no . Philip peeled her hand away. “Let me see, love.”
“It hurts,” she moaned.
Blood smeared her breast and collarbone, too much skin showing where the fabric of her bodice had been cut away, the bright gold spattered with red. But not a thrust, not a deep cut. The blade had slid along her skin, pricking her, but the bastard hadn’t plunged it into her heart.
“It’s shallow. Thank God. Shh, darling. I have you.”
He registered her widening eyes, her look of shock, a split second before the warning cry. “Philip!”
A shadow reared in his peripheral vision. Philip threw up his arm to block the blow, but it never fell. A mighty roar filled the room, and then the shadow lifted.
Philip turned to see that Bruyit had the thief raised over his head, held by neck and thigh, and he looked ready to rip the man in two. Philip had no doubt that he could.
“Don’t!” Melisende cried. “We need him alive to answer our questions.” She hissed and clasped her hand to her wounded shoulder. “Don’t kill him, Bruyit. Not yet.”
Bruyit, growling like a bear, held the man away from him, dangling by his neck, feet scrabbling to make contact with the floor. Above the enormous hand at his collar, the attacker’s eyes bulged with fear.
Melisende moaned and reached inside her bodice. “I’ve bled on the book.”
Reaction set it, the aftermath of a fight. Philip shook with the force of the relief that filled him. She was safe. She was cut, but she was otherwise unharmed. “Mel?—”
Her lips slammed against his, and he pulled her against him, awash with a fierce, hot need, more intense than anything he’d felt. He wanted her against him, surrounding him. He wanted to hold and cover every inch of her, dominate her with his body, so she would be protected. He burned with the ache to bury himself inside her, as if their joining could seal her to him and throw a shield around her, keeping her his, and safe.
“Ahem,” Bruyit said, and the roar in Philip’s head receded to admit a different set of noises. Voices. Cries. Shuffling feet and fabric, a blur of scents, not the deep, rich scent of his Melisende.
“ Gott in Himmel ,” a voice cried roughly. “Devlin, what have you done?”
Melisende looked over Philip’s shoulder, and the skin around her mouth went white.
“Father. I can explain.”