Page 6 of How to Seduce a Viscount
‘Why do you think there’s anything else?’ She knit her brow in an attempt at subterfuge, hoping to throw him off the scent, minimal as that hope might be.
Luce gave a chuckle. ‘Because, Miss Wren Audley, you left me two dead men on my doorstep to discreetly dispose of courtesy of your blade. It’s a most wicked weapon for a messenger to carry. Which brings me back to my previous question. What else do you do for my grandfather?’
‘A girl alone in the world can’t be too careful. I like to cover all my bases, Mr Parkhurst, or do you prefer Lord Waring these days?’ She offered the question with a smile made to distract. If subterfuge didn’t work, perhaps redirection would. She’d far rather talk about his new title than talk about herself.
But he wasn’t fooled by her enquiry or her smile. ‘Luce is fine. And a girl alone indeed. It’s an odd choice for my grandfather and a rather fraught one. He must be very sure of your abilities to put you in such situations.’
‘He is, and you should be, too. I’m only sorry I didn’t get the third man.’ Perhaps distracting him by discussing business would be more successful.
Luce gave another enigmatic nod. Was that a nod of approval? Or a nod of concession acknowledging he’d getnothing more out of her at the moment? She hoped for the latter. ‘It would have been better for the third man if you had killed him. Then his identity could have died with him.’ As would have anything the man knew. It was always a shame to lose information but sometimes that was the cost of doing business.
Wren leaned forward, impatient to hear the rest. ‘Well? What did you learn? Was he hired by one of Roan’s old minions set on revenge? Or was he from the Ottomans, sent to “retrieve” the message before it can be decoded?’
Luce laughed, his mouth curling up into a smile, appreciation twinkling in his eyes. Good. He liked her boldness. It didn’t intimidate him like it did other men. ‘If you already know, why do you ask? It is both, by the way.’ He paused and the glance he gave her this time was definitely a considering one. ‘Are you sureRoan’s minions are after us? It doesn’t seem the most logical of choices.’
She had to be careful or she’d give too much away even in a short sentence. ‘We must consider all possibilities.’
‘What aboutprobabilities? I am surprised Roan’s minions would have the time to bother. I would have thought they had enough to worry about cleaning up their own losses after Roan’s demise. Does Grandfather think it is likely anyone will cross the Channel in winter simply for revenge?’
‘Revenge is seldom logical.’ What she did not share was that the earl did, in fact, think it a probability of sorts once the weather cleared. They would come not only for revenge. Some of Roan’s minions were personally connected to the Ottoman forces and to the man Stepan had killed in the water. They’d cross the Channel for revengeandto retrieve the code. The earl was indeed worried enough to send her to track down a man whomightbe Stepan so that he wasn’t taken unawares should the probability become a reality. But she was not to let on about that to Luce.
She met Luce’s gaze with unwavering directness. ‘I think the earl has lost a grandson and is concerned about losing others. He is riddled with guilt and grief over what happened. He blames himself. He feels as if he made a mistake. It has, perhaps, made him overly cautious when it comes to the Horsemen.’ And when it came to her. It was that same grief that had the earl urging her towards retirement. The echoes of that conversation were ever-present in her mind.I want you safe before the time comes when I am not here to protect you. Because she owed the old man everything, she could not deny him this one last thing.
Mistakes? His grandfather did not make mistakes. For a long moment, all Luce could do was stare. Her audacity astounded him as much as her insinuations. This angel-haired ragamuffin with the quicksilver eyes deigned to tellhimabouthisgrandfather? To offer insights into the great man that was the Earl of Sandmore? To suggest the man had weaknesses? Who was she to dare such a thing?
Luce rose and walked to the console holding an array of decanters, in part to collect himself and in part because a drink was certainly in order despite the early hour. He poured two brandies and offered her one. She accepted the glass matter-of-factly, which was telling in its own way.
Luce re-took his seat. ‘I find it intriguing that you believe you know my grandfather so well as to understand his mind on such personal matters.’ And yet there were signs she might be right. When Caine had married in August, Grandfather had turned the day-to-day running of the Horsemen and the Sandmore network over to Caine. At Kieran’s wedding in December, Grandfather had settled a considerable sum on Kieran and his new bride for the upkeep of their estate.
‘I have been with the earl for a long time,’ she offered, and took a sip of the brandy with a manner that suggested she drank it often. He admired her confidence even dressed in borrowed night attire. She might be sipping brandies dressed in a ball gown for all her elan at the moment. It was hard to remember she’d been stabbed and writhing with fever five days ago. In fact, it was hard to remember much at all with her sitting there in his dressing gown. He couldn’t recall his nightwear ever looking so good and that tangle of platinum hair was positively seductive.
‘How longhaveyou been with Grandfather?’ Luce gathered himself. It was ridiculous to be so affected by her. He’d had plenty of conversations with plenty of beautiful women and never once had trouble keeping his thoughts in order. It couldn’t be terribly long. He was thirty-two and he’d been with Grandfather since he was twenty. Twelve years. He’d cut his teeth on Napoleon’s war. She was what, twenty? Twenty-two? Although she could pass for younger. Sitting there, swamped in his night clothes, one might mistake her for sixteen on a casual glance. A closer glance would reveal the error, though. She was no waif. That was an illusion and perhaps a convenient, oft used disguise. He’d had hours to truly discern the truth of her while she’d lain unconscious with fever.
‘Fifteen years,’ she replied over the rim of her glass, her eyes intent on him because the minxknewher answer would shock him. Beyond the shock though was disbelief.
‘Do you expect me to believe that?’ He grinned into his glass. Her subterfuge was falling apart. ‘It’s not possible. You would have been a child.’ The look on her face stalled the glass at his lips. ‘Wereyou a child?’
He’d not considered that and if he was being honest this conversation had elevated his curiosity, which had been on a barely contained simmer since he’d carried her bleeding body upstairs and patched her up. She was a woman full ofcontradictions. An angel who wielded a blade with the devil’s own deadly precision. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me how you became acquainted with my grandfather? Did you find him, or did he find you?’
She shifted in the big chair and adjusted the blanket, her robe slipping open to reveal the soft curve of a breast beneath the nightshirt. ‘He found me picking pockets where I shouldn’t have been when I was eight.’ She gave a smug smile and made no effort to readjust the robe. The minx enjoyed shocking him in all ways. Luce schooled his features, pretending to take each revelation in stride.
‘I was living on the London streets, running with a gang of pickpockets, sleeping on straw in a damp cellar in St Giles, eating whatever I could cadge or cajole. One day, I picked the wrong pocket, or perhaps the right one. Your grandfather caught me and offered me a choice. Either he could turn me in or I could work for him.’ She gave a delicate lift of her shoulder on her good side. ‘I could tell from the look of him that he was a man with power. If he turned me in it would be straight to the prison. The choice was easy. But some days I regretted it and I am sure your grandfather did, too. It was hard work, harder than I thought it would be, and I was stubborn.’
Luce’s brow arched in sardonic precision. ‘I wouldn’t have guessed it.’
‘You see, I couldn’t just go straight to work for him, I had to be cleaned up in all ways. I needed schooling, I needed manners. By the time your grandfather was done with me, I could speak, read and write three languages. I knew how to address all ranks of people, how to dress for any occasion, how to dance, how to shoot, how to use a knife, how to ride, how to fight and a hundred other things I had no idea I would need to know,’ she finished proudly.
Luce studied her afresh. Grandfather had done well. Any hint of the street had been entirely erased from her voice, her movements. He would not have guessed her beginnings had been so meagre, so bright was the polish on her now. But perhaps her story explained her tenacity on his doorstep, the will to fight, to win at all costs, without hesitation. Perhaps the scrapper in her had not been bred out. ‘I assume this means you have no parents? No brothers or sisters?’ Grandfather would not have taken a child with a family.
She nodded and the pride with which she’d ended her tale faded. ‘There’s no one. I don’t remember my parents.’ Her fingers were worrying the blanket now. He’d hit on a difficult subject for her. She might not remember them, but she remembered something.
A gentleman would let it be and Luce was usually a gentleman. But not always, not when there was information to be had. She’d finished her brandy and he swapped her glass for his, pressing the fuller glass into her hands. ‘Not a single memory? Surely you did not spring into the world as an eight-year-old pickpocket.’
The quicksilver eyes dimmed to grey. ‘I’d lived in the rookeries with the other children since I was three. It was all I knew. I don’t think children have any earlier memories before they’re three.’ She glanced at him, perhaps waiting for him to challenge her before she went on. ‘There was an older girl, Maggie, who looked after the little ones at night. She would tell us stories. Sometimes she shared her bread with me if she had extra. The best stories she told were the ones about each of us. She even gave each of us a birthday. It was usually the day we were brought to the cellar, but we didn’t know differently. We barely knew our names. She told me I was brought in October by a man who said my name was Wren. I had a blanket with me and the clothes I wore.’
‘Where does Audley come from, then?’ Luce enquired, genuinely curious even as he was morbidly enrapt in her horrific tale. His heart went out to the little girl who’d had the tenacity to take her circumstances in stride and survive.
‘Your grandfather found me on Audley Street. It was the beginning of a new life for me so it seemed appropriate to have a new name of sorts.’ She flashed a brief smile trying to make light of a maudlin tale. ‘That is the sum total memory of my origins. Needless to say, the blanket and I have long parted ways and I am much better off for having met your grandfather.’
