Chapter 5
It was well past midnight, but Ellie had not been able to catch a wink of sleep—the sole reason, Dorian Beaumont.
The night air brushed against her cheeks, cool and somewhat soothing after the hour she’d spent tossing in her bed. She hadn’t been able to sleep. The moment her eyes closed, she thought of the aggravating man.
“A Duke,” she muttered tiredly. “He claims he is a Duke, but he wants to be the lord of criminals. It is the most absurd thing I have ever heard.”
Shifting, she punched her pillow into shape and then pressed her cheek on it. “The man is truly an enigma wrapped in a mystery, and cloaked in an obscurity.”
The grating screech of a doorway had her jerking up in fear; had Carrington found her? Darting up, she considered hiding in the washing room—when she heard Dorian’s guttural curse and a horrendous crash.
Rushing into the main room, her eyes took a while to adjust to the darkness, but she spotted Dorian staggering to the other end of the room, clutching his left arm.
“Dorian,” she rushed to him. “Are you—”
Blood, she saw blood on his arm, the whole sleeve was doused in red; fear lurched up her throat. “Dorian! What happened!”
He ignored her and headed to another room—one she realized was his bedchamber. He was still stumbling and Ellie feared that he was drunk and injured, the worst possible combination under creation.
She swallowed and with her heart in her throat, she stepped inside to see him stripping his shirt away, but the buttons slipped from his left hand, and he was muttering curses under his breath.
Ellie acted before she could think and slapped his hand away to undo the buttons herself. The acrid, coppery scent of blood curdled her nose, and she studiously ignored the full sleeve of blood.
She briefly met his eyes before she peeled the lapels away; the moonlight glimmered over his virile proportions.
His wide shoulders and bulging arms were sculpted sinew, and his chest was made up of delineated blocks of the flint, with a light covering of dark hair that narrowed into a trail over his lean, ridged belly.
He flopped to the edge of his bed and twisted his arm, “If you want to be useful, go into my washing room, wet a rag, and bring it to me. Then, take a glass of brandy from that cupboard there, the bandages from that chest and hand them to me too.”
Wordlessly, she did as he asked, wetted the rag, handed it to him, found the brandy, then rummaged in the chest for the bandages. “What happened?”
“Nothing of your concern,” he grunted while inspecting his arm.
A horrendous gash was slashed across his arm but it did not look punctured. The wound did not look neat enough to have come from a blade either, so she hazarded a guess. “Were you… were you shot?”
“Yes,” Dorian replied before pulling the oiled cloth from the brandy bottle. Unceremoniously, he dumped half the bottle over the gash and ground his jaw.
Ellie flinched.
For a wound so fresh, that had to hurt like the devil’s fork had been jammed into him. When he let out a long breath and began to pat the wound dry, it still pebbled with blood, and shifting her eyes away, Ellie busied herself with undoing the roll of clean linen strips.
She didn’t want to think why he had piles of them in the trunk.
Looking up, she saw Dorian take a healthy swig of the liquor, the smooth bob of his Adam’s apple, and her chest fluttered. The polarizing feeling she’d felt at dinner seemed to double in strength.
She should not feel attracted to this man—he was an unrepentant troglodyte who only wanted her to further his needs. She shouldn’t care enough to help him either, but Ellie found that she could not—would not—turn away when he needed help.
It was so strong, so intense, so enigmatic—he was enigmatic. Beyond anything she’d come across in novels— and she had done a lot of reading.
“You will need a salve to stave off infection,” she began.
His eyes flickered up to her before returning to the wound. “There is one in the trunk.”
Retrieving the tub, she pried it open for him to scoop some out and slather it over his skin, then wrap the bandage with finesse that perturbed Ellie. No one should be so adept at bandaging wounds.
“I can feel you judging me,” he murmured while inspecting his work.
“You have been wounded many times before, haven’t you?” she said.
“More than you can imagine,” Dorian replied, before taking another mouthful of brandy.
She sunk to the nearest chair and let out a long breath. “I cannot find it in me to imagine you as a boy in the stews.”
“Well, I was,” he replied, leaning back and propping the bottle on his thigh.
“You would think scrabbling for bread and water in the slums was any different from the lords of London. They are no different from the cutthroats in the stews I grew up with. These fine lords and ladies were just as savage, thirsting for blood at every turn.”
Her brows dropped. “The ladies can be savage, especially when it comes to finding husbands. They will throw you under the carriage and drive over you twice if they can see a way to take a lord away from you, and many will. I cannot say so about the lords.”
Shadows danced over his face while he gave a smoky laugh. “If you were able to set foot in White’s, you would change your mind in minutes.”
“But you are a Duke,” she shook her head. “How—how did you end up in the stews?”
In the flickering dimness, wildfire glimmered in his eyes and waves of tension rolled off his powerful frame. “That is none of your concern.”
Her fists balled at his unbelievable arrogance. “What is wrong with you giving a little? You seem to know more about me than I would like, but you must cut me off at every turn. I am trying to help you—you conceited coxcomb!”
His raucous laugh was not a reaction she had expected. “You really cannot curse, can you? That was almost poignant.”
“Oh, good god,” Ellie muttered. Sucking in a long, steadying breath, she asked, “How long do you estimate that I will be here, with you.”
“I should feel offended,” he said easily.
“You are offensive,” Ellie replied.
“But I have not decided on how long you will be here,” he finished. “You shall have to bear with my boorish presence a little while longer, while you wear such a voluminous nightgown. If I had come across you when I was fifteen, I could have hidden under that tent of yours.”
She tensed. “This is how a proper woman dresses. I cannot think you have met many of them.”
“Sweetheart, you are wearing enough miles of ribbon, lace and flounces to clothe every lady in the ton and half the girls in Covent Garden,” he said mockingly.
“But I can understand, your aunt was not the paragon of fashion either. Her gowns were gunny-sacks with jewel trim. Your cousin is not much better.”
Ellie stared at him. “You are unsufferable.”
“I am.”
“Does it not bother you that I cannot figure out if I can stomach you or not.”
“Good,” he said, his head rolling. “I like keeping you on tenterhooks.”
“Ugh,” she huffed, getting to her feet. “Imbecile.”
His eyes notched open, “You have a smart, impudent mouth, mouse. I’d bet my last coin it’s not been tamed yet.”
She spun back, gaping. “Excuse me?”
Leaning on a mountain of pillows, and half-shadowed, he replied, “Have you ever been kissed?”
Crossing her arms, her head notched up, “How is that any of your concern?”
“I’ll take that as a no,” he replied, disdain in his tone. “Do you want to?”
It took Ellie half a beat longer than it would normally have to get his meaning, but when it dawned on her, she replied, “You want to kiss me.”
“It is an altruistic offer,” he proposed. “I suppose I glimpsed a dim, nun-like future for you, especially in that mammoth nightrail. But if you want to waltz into spinsterhood, un-kissed, who am I to object.”
“Good, because I reject your offer! Especially since you are completely foxed.”
He scoffed. “I am hardly drunk, but suit yourself.”
Spinning again, Ellie took two steps, then stopped as damned curiosity arrested her. What would a real kiss from a gentleman feel like? A heat melding of mouths, the powerful sweep of his tongue through her lips, the warm heat of his body against hers?
“Oh ho, are you having a moment of curiosity about the adventures you and I might share?” Dorian taunted her.
“No,” she lied. “When I do kiss a man, it will be a proper gentleman. And you are no gentleman.”
His laugh was sardonic. “You’re right. I am not one.” As she walked away, he added, “But scoundrels are so much better than a gentleman when it comes to seduction.”
She pivoted to look over her shoulder. “I do not envy you the headache tomorrow will bring. Goodnight, Your Grace.”
Dorian knew he was dancing with danger.
Just as the consequence of him sipping the brandy by the mouthful would come, poking and prodding at Evelina would not help matters. It was a perverse pleasure, but he liked seeing her eyes flame with a passion he knew she did not realize was inside her.
The brandy burned going down.
Tipping his head back to the headboard, he breathed out the pain still pulsing in his arm. “I was not lying about the kissing,” he murmured while watching the moon slowly descend to the treeline. “T’was the wrong time.”
What would it be like to kiss Evelina’s tart lips? The thought crashed in on him with the same force Nathan’s fist had once delivered to his gut in a prizefighting bout.
He took a last drink before setting the bottle to the side.
Ellie was right about a few things; he did know more about her than she would ever know about him. She didn’t know—and would never have an inkling—that Dorian’s spies had alerted him to Sterling meeting with gentry. That alone had piqued his interest.
Discreet inquiries had given him a full dossier on the Langfords, Evelina’s relatives. The uncle, Patrick, was a solicitor with a failing practice, the only thing keeping his family afloat was the stock he’d invested in merchandise ships.
His wife, Constance, had come from a decent stock, but as the younger sister to Peregrine Frampton, Ellie’s father, she had left the house with her dowry.
The problem was, she’d been brought up needing nothing, and though she had married into money and status, she had only found herself just above the line of the lower class. Her aunt was a bitter one, especially since her brother had grown wealthy while she’d married into barely-there.
But Evelina did not know about her relatives’ resentments, and he did not want to tell her about it—not yet.
Rising from his perch, Dorian barely managed to kick his boots off, change his pants, and, after donning a loose trouser, got back into bed. The moment his head hit the pillow, he was dead to the world.
The hard bangs on the door had Dorian ready to shout a line of curses that would make a sailor blush. It was then that he realized the banging was coming from the front door of the house and not his inner door.
Pausing for a moment to rinse his mouth out, he pressed his fingertips into his skull, hoping the pressure would counteract the pounding from within—it did not. Nor did swallowing multiple times offset the sour feeling in the pit of his throat.
Throwing on a robe, he padded barefoot to the door and yanked the door in—only to stop short.
Sterling and two of his footmen were on his doorstep. Garbed in an impeccable suit of charcoal superfine and with a patterned brown waistcoat, he looked like the poisonous adder he truly was.
“Carrington,” he greeted, wincing at the sunlight jabbing knives into his pupils. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just visiting the Langfords, as we are all at a loss how their niece can vanish into thin air,” Carrington said.
Dorian’s brow ticked up while he stifled his irritation. “Is that all, or did you hear whispers about a dust-up in Whitechapel?”
“That too,” Sterling replied. “May we come in?”
“No,” Dorian cut in. “I am not in the mood to have company or entertain. We can talk later tonight if you want to come by the club.”
“I know what you are doing, Beaumont,” Sterling muttered.
“And what the bloody blazes do you think that is,” Dorian argued.
“Aside from the fact that you are avoiding me—”
His temper surged. “I got shot last night and I came home to drink my pain away in a bottle of brandy. The damn sun is turning my eye into hotplates and my brain into porridge.”
“You’re trying to unseat me, and if you were anyone else other than my protégé, I would have applauded you in moving up the ladder,” Sterling said calmly, but Dorian heard the sharp steel behind his words. “But this is treason in my book.”
“Business competition is hardly treason,” Dorian replied with equal equanimity.
“I gave you the rulebook for overthrowing giants,” Sterling snapped back.
“I rewrote your damned rules,” Dorian finished, “Now, if you will exc—”
Sterling’s eyes flickered over Dorian’s shoulder just as he heard hurried footsteps dashing away from the front room. Fear flared up his spine.
“You have a lady friend,” Sterling’s gaze shifted back to Dorian. “You forgot to mention that.”
“Do you name the whores you sleep with?” Dorian lied smoothly. His heart lurched as Evelina was the furthest thing from a whore, but he had to shift Sterling’s mind away from her. “But back to the matter at hand. Even lions know when it is time to quietly retire to the pasture.”
“This lion is not going anywhere,” Sterling snarled.
His throbbing head couldn’t take this; Dorian replied, “Suit yourself. Are you done here?”
“I’d still like to come in,” Sterling nodded. “Maybe we can share your lady friend.”
Disgusted, Dorian added, “No, and to whit, I rescind that offer to come to the Club. I’ll be indisposed. See yourself out.”
The hard slam of the door was trite comfort to him as he strode further inside to find Evelina. If only she knew how close she had come to discovery and an unfavorable fate.
He strode into her room again. Her chamber smelled faintly of lavender, and he found her in bed with a book in hand.
“What in damnation was that?” he demanded. “Do you know the definition of hiding? Why would you dare even come out of your room? That was Carrington! If he’d seen you, you would have been trussed up like a chicken and thrown into the back of his carriage to go to God knows where! Think, girl!”
A flush tinged the curve of her cheeks. Her pearly teeth sank into her dimpled lower lip, a tell-tale sign of nerves. Her eyes flickered up, “I am sorry.”
“I had to tell him you were a whore,” he said brazenly. “He asked if he could come in to share you. I know you are smart enough to know what he meant.”
Her face flamed but her lips twisted with horror. “Oh god.”
“Yes, oh God.” He raked a hand through his already tousled hair. “If he had seen you, I would have been forced to do things that are slated for later in the plan.”
She hesitated in asking. “Like what?”