Chapter Nine
As they traversed the docklands, Diana was in danger of losing her nerve.
Her mission had consumed her for years. She’d devoted the best of herself to it; given it her dreams and aspirations, along with a good deal of her fortune.
A few words from Ian could convince her to toss it all away.
As the dim light from the gas lamps gilded his handsome silhouette, she pleaded with him silently.
Ask to come with me.
Ian watched the dark water lap against the dock. He needed to capture every sight and sound and scent of these last moments with Diana to preserve them in his memory.
Hazy lamplight and fog obscured the ship moored in the distance. The wind stirred and bit at his cheeks. As he turned to shield himself from it, the sight of Diana pulling his coat close around her neck roused a deep ache in his chest.
“None of this was about revenge, you know,” she whispered. “I wish Jared no ill will. And I do hope Henry can help Polly and Johnny.”
Ian refused to think about Henry’s suggestion that he accompany Diana. If she’d even allow Ian to accompany her, he’d never extract her from the factions warring over the emeralds, and he wouldn’t risk her life out of his selfish desire to be with her.
But he bloody well wasn’t letting her out of his sight without finding out some clue about where she was heading.
He squinted at the boat ahead of them and swallowed his frustration that he couldn’t make out the name or defining marks from a distance. “When do you make sail?”
“Sooner than I wish.”
Imminently, she’d be too far out of reach to touch, and that anxious thought prompted him to draw closer to her. He thrilled as her breath faltered.
“Whatever you’re going to ask me, I likely can’t answer,” she insisted primly. “I know you hoped to interrogate me. I can detect your intention plain as day on your face. When your jaw clenches like that, you’re downright sinister.”
Confessing that she’d paid such close attention was careless. The very opposite of guarding herself.
His heart wanted to fly, if not for the questions that plagued him.
“We’re here in the docklands, and I’m its devil,” he said, his voice low. “You seem to be the only person who isn’t afraid of what I do here.”
“And you seem to be the only person who’s afraid of what I could do here.”
To prove her wrong, he stepped closer. In the cold of the evening, the visible white trails of their breaths mingled. “I could make you talk.”
Her smile flashed a brilliant white streak as she slowly shook her head.
“At least tell me where you’re going.” So I can find you, he omitted.
“I can’t,” she said kindly, as she would to a child.
He detested it because she was trying to be gentle when all he wanted was something forceful to break him away from the need to be beside her.
“The boat doesn’t have a route filed with the harbormaster, which isn’t entirely legal, and the police will try to question you about what happened at the Swan’s Nest,” she added. “This way, you won’t be forced to admit you were a part of my plot to disappear.”
“Merely one of your tools to implement it.”
“No. You’re the reason I succeeded.”
Her cheeks were stained red; he hoped it wasn’t just from the wind, that it was because she felt the same restless heat that plagued him.
The dock swayed with the tide, edging them closer together, and he couldn’t resist placing his hand at her waist.
“You didn’t need to make me a part of this,” he rasped. “Tell me why you did.”
“You’ve watched over me one way or another since we were children. I used to think it was because my father wasn’t the protective sort, and you needed something to protect. It took me a long time to realize the reason you were paying such close attention was something entirely different.”
He couldn’t deny it. Not with the way she gazed at him, her eyes clear and calm, and her plump mouth parted.
Slowly, he brushed a knuckle down her cheek; her skin was softer than velvet. She trembled, and the surge of joy and relief at her reaction, at what they were admitting, made his hands shake.
He cupped her face. “You need protecting because you draw danger to you. Everything is drawn to you, Diana. Including me.”
“I wish we had more time.”
“I wish I could go with you.”
She gave a faint moan that collided with his. But now that he’d spoken the desire aloud, he couldn’t stop there.
“I wish neither of us were bound to our obligations. And no one else’s lives hinged on the choices we made.” His eyes traced her face. “And I wish I had the strength to let you go without it feeling like I’m being sliced open and losing the very best part of myself.”
Diana reeled him in by the lapels of his coat and pressed her lips to his.
He experienced the impact in every atom of his body.
Her mouth was cool at first, then deliciously hot as friction built between them. The faint scent of whisky lingered on her breath. It made him ravenous for her taste, which was beyond anything his fantasies had conjured over the years.
As his arms tightened around her, he teased her lips open with his tongue.
She gave a feverish little groan and responded to his advance by sampling him, adding and releasing pressure.
He would have praised her for it and commanded her to apply those clever lips in an array of obscene ways, but he couldn’t stop kissing her.
She savored his mouth with equal fervor. There was an underlying urgency in the way she hardly stopped for a breath; it echoed his own desperation. Her hands dove into his coat and began an exploration of his torso, which made him gasp, and he swore she laughed in the back of her throat.
A sharp whistle tore through the air.
It sounded suspiciously like the one Diana had deployed at the pub.
Ian broke the kiss but couldn’t bring himself to lose contact with her entirely. He pressed her face into his neck, terrified he’d blurt out the only thought that consumed him.
Ask me to come with you.
His pride wouldn’t allow him to beg; his common sense reminded him of the harm that could befall Diana if he joined her.
But his heart didn’t care what his pride or his sense wanted.
The whistle blew again, and Diana physically started. Her eyes roved his face with something like wonder, and something like pain, which was the expression he imagined he was wearing.
He couldn’t go with her. He needed to leave London himself. And he didn’t want her to witness what he’d have to become to protect her, and his promise to his father.
Wordlessly, he gestured to the ramp that led down to the wharf.
“I can go from here. It’s not that I wouldn’t prefer your company,” she added quickly. “But I’m struggling with my conscience at the moment.”
He was struggling with everything, but her honesty made him acquiesce. “I’ll bid you farewell from here. But I shall stay and watch for a while.”
“Thank you.” She placed a hand on his cheek. It was gone before he fully registered she’d touched him again, and in the next blink of his eye, she’d darted down the gangplank.
Her trim figure bobbed along the pier. As she swung up onto the boat with alacrity, it resurrected his suspicion until he reminded himself that she’d grown up in her father’s shipyard.
A horn blew, and the boat pulled away from the dock. Diana walked around and stood at the stern. Ian wanted to believe she was staring back at him, but it was impossible to tell in the darkness, with mist blanketing the river.
He watched devotedly and wouldn’t allow himself to blink until the ship was out of sight. Only then would he accept his last moment with her had ended.
“I can’t believe you let her go.”
For a frantic moment, Ian imagined the voice was his disembodied conscience before Leo Ashton stepped out of the fog.
“Your…Grace?” There was no rational explanation for the duke’s sudden arrival. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
The duke raised a compact spyglass and replied, “Spying, Holt.”
Sunderland had worked for the Royal Navy before unexpectedly inheriting his title, and the gossips whispered he continued on in clandestine service. The duke enjoyed stoking those rumors.
As a devil himself, Ian knew it could have served as an excellent cover.
“How long have you been watching my family?” Ian’s low rasp was uncivil, but given the events of the day, he was overly enthusiastic to crush something. Or someone.
“Jared isn’t the one who interests me,” Sunderland said plainly.
Ian stepped in between the duke and his view of the departing ship. “Diana Rives has nothing to do with Her Majesty’s military.”
“Not true. Her father’s company has more shipbuilding contracts with the navy than anyone else in Britain.”
“Her company,” Ian corrected.
“Yes, and wasn’t it supposed to become your brother’s?”
“Is that why you were keeping such a close eye on him?”
A trace of a smirk played on the duke’s face. “I caught wind of Jared’s meeting at the Swan’s Nest. Your brother collected some counterfeit papers. But he also made inquiries about selling the Holt emeralds.”
Ian paused. “That was foolish of him.”
“Indeed,” the duke agreed. “Especially since that necklace can never be bought or sold. It must be won. But you knew that.”
Apparently, Jared hadn’t. Or he’d refused to believe the stories that were more truth than tale. Ian had never uttered the words Il Gioco to his brother, but he assumed, wrongly, that their father had warned Jared about the dangerous game and the criminals they’d hidden the gems from for years.
Jared didn’t own the necklace because Jared had never had the chance to win it. And suggesting he had a right to sell it, without earning it in the first place, was more dangerous than entangling himself with counterfeit thugs.
“The Il Gioco legend is a favorite of mine.” Sunderland’s grin turned predatory at Ian’s silence. “Three famiglie who all have historic claim to one notorious set of jewels. It’s deliciously heathen to imagine they all played to the death purely for the bragging rights to own it. Once upon a time.”
“What an incredible story,” Ian said faintly.
“Truly,” the duke agreed enthusiastically. “Imagine my disappointment when I encountered a prominent player at the Swan’s Nest, and he refused to divulge what was real and what was fiction.”
He was referring to the silver-haired man Diana and Ian had seen at the pub. The reprobate could have sent the brutes who ransacked the shipping office.
“Is there a credible threat to my family?” Ian demanded.
“Not that I know of, but we haven’t ruled it out. Of course, this,” the duke gestured to Diana’s departing vessel with his spyglass, “is a complication.”
When Ian’s silence offered a tacit accord, Sunderland gave a low laugh. “Why did you let her go?”
“She was never mine to lose.”
Good Lord, he sounded pathetic.
It was enough to draw a louder laugh from the duke. “No, you clodpate. I meant why did you let her escape with that fortune in emeralds around her neck?”
Ian’s hand dove into his waistcoat. And found his pockets empty.
His head snapped toward the river. There was hardly a ripple left from the boat; it had receded into the fog.
He swung back around to Sunderland.
The duke lifted his spyglass as proof of his accusation. “Now why would one of the richest women in Great Britain need to steal the Holt emeralds?” Sunderland mused. “She might know some of the legend, but does she know what’s attached to them?”
Blood beat loudly in Ian’s ears, and he expelled a string of curses in every language he spoke.
With that searing kiss, Diana had betrayed him. And put herself in more danger.
Sunderland, damn him, was standing in the middle of the dock, watching intently. Ian brushed past him, but the duke halted him with a commanding grip on his arm.
“Your show is over for the evening, Your Grace. Let me go.” He had no time to clean up a puddle of aristocratic blood tonight. He had to find out what course they were charting before Diana was halfway to France or Flanders, or God help him, the Antipodes.
“Easy, old man. The tug she boarded is bound to Bristol.” Sunderland lifted a battered silver pocket watch from his pocket. “If you hurry, you can catch the nine o’clock out of King’s Cross. You might beat her there.”
This helpful suggestion was insipidly convenient, which gave Ian pause. He evaluated the duke and his sly spyglass before he reached into his pocket to palm his pistol. “Why have you made this your business, Duke?”
“I enjoy amassing favors. And make no mistake, Holt, I will collect on it. Your Miss Rives is part of something that could threaten the Crown and its allies abroad. She’s put herself in the crosshairs of some nasty people who are looking for that necklace.
You know how to reclaim it and keep her safe.
And I need to know whose side she’s playing for. ”
So did Ian.
Diana had entwined him in her escape to prevent him from stealing the emeralds himself. The kiss they’d shared was the perfect distraction; he couldn’t have concocted a better ruse himself to cover her theft of the necklace.
And yet…
The way she’d kissed him hadn’t felt like a goodbye kiss. On the contrary.
It had felt like an invitation.
Perhaps he was deluding himself, but the only way he could make sense of her actions was to believe that she wanted him to follow her.
She was practically daring him to.
“Any of the famiglie could have targeted Diana and coerced her to take the necklace,” Ian said.
“The alternative is that Miss Rives could be as dangerous as the other scoundrels vying for the necklace,” Sunderland replied. “You can either leave it for us to find out…or you can go after her.”