Regency Rogues

August 2019

Outrageous Scandal

September 2019

Rakes’ Redemption

October 2019

Wicked Seduction

November 2019

A Winter’s Night

December 2019

Unlacing the Forbidden

January 2020

Stolen Sins

February 2020

Candlelight Confessions

March 2020

Rescued by Temptation

April 2020

Wives Wanted

May 2020

Disgraceful Secrets

June 2020

Talk of the Ton

July 2020

Exotic Affairs

About the Author

MARGUERITE KAYE writes hot historical romances from her home in cold and usually rainy Scotland. Featuring Regency Rakes, Highlanders and Sheikhs, she has published over fifty books and novellas. When she’s not writing she enjoys walking, cycling (but only on the level), gardening (but only what she can eat) and cooking. She also likes to knit and occasionally drink martinis (though not at the same time). Find out more on her website: www.margueritekaye.com

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Regency Rogues: Candlelight Confessions

Outrageous Confessions of Lady Deborah

Marguerite Kaye

The Beauty Within

Marguerite Kaye

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90656-6

REGENCY ROGUES: CANDLELIGHT CONFESSIONS

Outrageous Confessions of Lady Deborah © 2012 Marguerite Kaye The Beauty Within © 2013 Marguerite Kaye

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

 Change of font size and line height

 Change of background and font colours

 Change of font

 Change justification

 Text to speech

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Outrageous Confessions of Lady Deborah

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

The Beauty Within

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

About the Publisher

Outrageous Confessions of Lady Deborah

Marguerite Kaye

Prologue

The murals were surprisingly well executed. Whoever had commissioned them certainly had eclectic taste, for Dionysius practiced his arts on one wall, with Sappho adjacent, and a selection of rather graphic and—in his lordship’s opinion—physically impossible combinations of male and female were portrayed opposite. Upon the fourth wall was painted a rather interesting triumvirate which Charles Mumford, Third Marquess of Rosevale, would have liked to explore further. His current position, however, made this rather difficult.

‘For pity’s sake, Bella, have mercy, I beg of you.’ The Marquess was a man most unused to pleading. In the normal run of things it was his expectation—indeed, he believed it was his inalienable right—to have his every instruction obeyed instantly. But the situation in which he currently found himself could by no stretch of the imagination be described as normal.

For a start he was trussed like a chicken, bound hand and foot to the ornate canopied bed in the centre of the room. His shirt having been ripped open and his breeches roughly pulled down, he was also shockingly exposed, excitingly vulnerable, from his neck to his knees.

Then there was the fact that he was being coolly appraised by quite the most exotic and alluring creature he had ever clapped eyes upon. Clad in a black velvet robe with a décolleté so daring it seemed to be held in place only by the sheer power of her considerable will, she was the stuff of every red-blooded man’s fantasy. Dark silken tresses tumbled down her back. Her skin was the colour of whipped cream. Her lips were full, painted harlot red. Her countenance sultry. The black stock of the cat-o-nine-tails she stroked was thick and weighty. She was, overall, a perfect combination of the voluptuous and the vicious, which sent the blood surging to the Marquess’s most prized piece of anatomy. Charles Mumford groaned. Whether in trepidation or anticipation only he could truly know.

Bella Donna allowed her eyes to wander languidly over the body of her captive. Despite the undoubted fact that he was an insufferable prig, more than deserving of whatever punishment she decided to mete out to him, the Marquess was a prime physical specimen, his lightly muscled body testament to his fondness for the noble art of fencing. A sheen of sweat glistened on his torso as he fought to free himself from his constraints. The muscles in his arms bulged like cords as they strained against the knots she had so expertly tied. A spattering of dark hair arrowed down from his chest, over the flat plane of his taut belly, and down. Bella’s eyes widened as she followed its trail. His reputation was indeed well deserved. She flicked her tongue slowly over her rouged lips. Dispensing punishment did not preclude an element of pleasure. Especially hers.

Bella drew the whip slowly down the Marquess’s body, watching his skin quiver as the leather thongs slid over him, giving his twitching member an expert and playful little tug.

His Lordship groaned. ‘Devil take you, release me.’

Bella laughed. ‘In your world your word may be law, but you are in my world now. The dark and erotic world of the night, where I am queen and you are my subject. I will release you when I have done with you and not before.’

‘Curse you, Bella! Deadly Nightshade! You are well named. What have I done to deserve this?’

‘You are a man. That is crime enough,’ Bella hissed, noting with satisfaction that, despite his pleas, the Marquess’s tumescence was burgeoning. She plied her whip once more, a little more decisively this time. A hiss as the leather thongs made contact, raising soft welts on the flesh, made her victim wince, made his jutting shaft stand up proudly. She shuddered with anticipation. They were ready. All three of them.

‘Enough talk,’ she said, as she hitched up her skirts and prepared to mount him. ‘I have a notion for a midnight ride, and I see a stallion champing at the bit. Though I warn you,’ she whispered into his ear, as she began to sheath the thick pole of his rampant manhood, ‘I will not hesitate to use the whip if you cannot maintain the gallop.’

The author put down her pen with a trembling hand. It was, she thought, quite the best and most outrageous scene she had written thus far.

‘Goodnight, Bella,’ she said as she slipped the sheaf of parchment into her desk and turned the key in the lock, ‘I look forward to renewing our acquaintance tomorrow.’

Smiling with a satisfaction quite different from Bella’s but no less deep, she snuffed out the candle and retired to her own rather more spartan bedchamber.

Chapter One

Sussex—February 1817

The mechanism which controlled the huge mantel clock jolted into action, the harsh grating sound shattering the blanket of silence, startling him into dropping his wrench. Elliot Marchmont melted back into the shadows of the elegant drawing room, taking refuge behind the thick damask window hangings. They were dusty. His nose itched. He had to quickly stifle a sneeze. Lady Kinsail, it seemed, was not an overly fastidious housekeeper.

The clock began to chime the hour. One. Two. Three. It was an old piece, Louis Quatorze by the looks of it, with an intricate face showing the phases of the moon as well as the time. Gold in the casing. Diamonds on the display. Valuable. There had been a similar one in a grand house he’d visited while in Lisbon. Elliot’s lip curled. He doubted it was still there.

The chimes faded into the night and silence again reigned. Elliot waited. One minute. Two. Only after five had elapsed did he dare move, for experience had taught him to be cautious while there was still a chance that someone in the household, disturbed by the sound, had awoken. But all was well. The coast was clear.

Outside, thin ribbons of grey cloud scudded over the luminous half-moon like wisps of smoke. Silent and stealthy as a cat, shading the light from his lantern with his kerchief, Elliot made his way over to the wall at the far end of the room on which the portrait was hung. The current Lord Kinsail glowered down at him in the dim light, a jowly man with hooded eyes and a thin mouth.

‘Grave-robbing weasel,’ Elliot hissed viciously. ‘Callous, unfeeling prig.’

The likeness of the government minister who had, some years previously, been responsible for supplying the British army during the Peninsular War—or not supplying them, if you asked the man now gazing disdainfully up at him—remained unmoved.

Perched precariously on a flimsy-looking gilded chair, Elliot felt his way carefully round the picture, uttering a small grunt of satisfaction as the mechanism opened with a tiny click. The heavy portrait swung silently back on its hinges. He ducked, only just avoiding being clipped on the jaw by the ormolu corner of the frame.

Getting efficiently down to business, Elliot extracted his selection of picks from the capacious pocket of his greatcoat and carefully placed the wrench he used for leverage. Although the safe was old, the Earl had replaced the original warded lock with a more modern arrangement. Faced with four rather than the standard two separate lever tumblers to manipulate, it took Elliot almost twenty minutes to complete the delicate task. As the last tumbler lifted and the bolt finally slid back he eased open the safe door, breathing a sigh of relief.

Papers tied with ribbon and marked with the Earl’s seal were crammed into the small space. Underneath them were a number of leather boxes which Elliot wasted no time in opening, rifling through the contents. The Kinsail jewels were, he noted, of excellent quality, if of surprisingly meagre quantity. The family coffers had obviously been seriously depleted at some point in the past. He shrugged. What these people did with their own property was none of his concern.

The item he was looking for was not in any of the boxes. He paused for a moment, one hand stroking his jawline, the rasp of his stubble audible in the smothering silence. Working his fingers quickly across the back wall of the safe, he found a loose panel which concealed a small recess in which sat a velvet pouch. Elliot’s triumphant smile glinted in the moonlight as he unwrapped the prize he sought. The large blue diamond was strangely faceted and rectangular in shape. One hundred carats at least, he guessed, about half the size of the original from which it had been cut.

Slipping it into his pocket along with his picks, Elliot extracted his calling card and placed it carefully in the safe. A creak in the corridor outside made him pause in the act of opening the drawing-room door to make good his escape. It could simply be the sound of the timbers of the old house settling, but he decided not to risk exiting Kinsail Manor the way he had entered—through the basement—since this would require him to traverse the entire house.

Making hastily for the window, he pulled back the leaded glass and, with an agility which would have impressed but not surprised the men who had served under him, former Major Elliot Marchmont leapt on to the sill, grabbed the leaded drain which ran down the side of the building, said a silent prayer to whatever gods protected housebreakers that the pipe would support his muscular frame, and began the treacherous descent.

The stable clock chimed the half-hour as Lady Deborah Napier, Dowager Countess of Kinsail, passed through the side gate leading from the park into the formal gardens. In the time it had taken her to make her usual nightly circuit around the grounds of the Manor the skies had cleared. Shivering, she pulled her mantle around her. Made of turkey-red wool, with a short cape in the style of a man’s greatcoat, it served the dual purpose of keeping her warm and disguising the fact that underneath she wore only her nightshift. An incongruous picture she must make, with her hair in its curl papers and her feet clad in hand-knitted stockings and sturdy boots—the staid Jacob, Lord Kinsail, would be appalled to discover that his late cousin’s widow was accustomed to roam the grounds in such attire on almost every one of the long, sleepless nights of the annual visit which duty demanded of her.

As she passed through the stableyard, making her way across the grass in order to avoid her boots crunching on the gravel, Deborah smiled to herself. It was a small enough act of subversion when all was said and done, but it amused her none the less. Lord knew there was no love lost between herself and the Earl, who blamed her for everything—her husband’s premature death, the debts he’d left behind, the shameful state of his lands and her own woeful failure to provide Jeremy with a son to take them on. Most especially Jacob blamed her for this last fact.

I suppose I should be grateful that he continues to acknowledge me, she mused, for, after all, an heiress whose coffers and womb have both proven ultimately barren is rather a pathetic creature—even if my empty nursery conferred upon Jacob a title he had no right to expect. But, alack, I cannot find it in me to be grateful for being invited to this house. I am, upon each visit, astonished anew that the damned man can think he is conferring a favour by inviting me to spend two torturous weeks in the very place where I spent seven torturous years.

She paused to gaze up at the moon. ‘Is it any wonder,’ she demanded of it, ‘that I cannot find tranquil repose?’

The moon declined to answer and Deborah realised that she’d once again been talking to herself. It was an old habit, cultivated originally in the lonely years she’d spent after Mama and Papa had died, when she had been left largely to her own devices in her aged uncle’s house. She had invented a whole schoolroom full of imaginary friends and filled page after page of the notebooks which should have contained her arithmetic with stories to tell them.

Deborah had no idea how long her elderly governess had been watching her from the doorway of the schoolroom that day, as she’d read aloud one of those tales of derring-do, stopping every now and then to consult her invisible companions on a point of plot, but it had been enough for that august lady to declare herself unable to cope with such a precocious child. To Deborah’s delight, her governess had left and her uncle had decided to send her off to school.

‘Little did she know,’ Deborah muttered to herself, ‘that she was conferring upon me the happiest five years of my life in all my eight-and-twenty.’

At Miss Kilpatrick’s Seminary for Young Ladies, Deborah’s stories had made her popular, helping her to overcome her initial shyness and make real friends.

As she’d grown from adolescence to young womanhood, her plots had progressed from pirates and plunder through ghosts and hauntings to tales of handsome knights fearlessly and boldly pursuing beautiful ladies. Love had ever been a theme—even in Deborah’s most childish scribblings she had found new families for orphaned babes and reunited long-lost brothers with their loyal sister on a regular basis. But it was romantic love which had dominated her stories those last two years at the seminary—the kind which required her heroes to set out on wildly dangerous journeys and carry out impossible tasks; the kind which had her heroines defy their cruel guardians, risking life and limb and reputation to be with the man of their dreams.

Huddled around the meagre fire in the ladies’ sitting room, Deborah had woven her plots, embellishing and embroidering as she narrated to her spellbound audience, so caught up in the worlds and characters she’d created that it had always been a jolt when Miss Kilpatrick had rapped on the door and told them all it was time for bed.

‘Some day soon,’ she remembered telling her best friend Beatrice, ‘that will be us. When we leave here …’

But Bea—pretty, practical, a year older and a decade wiser, the eldest daughter of an extremely wealthy Lancashire mill owner—had laughed. ‘Honestly, Deb, it’s about time you realised those romances of yours are just make believe. People don’t fall in love with one look; even if they did, you can be sure that they’d likely fall out of love again just as fast. I don’t want my husband to kiss the hem of my skirt or clutch at his heart every time I walk into a room. I want to know that he’ll be there when I need him, that he won’t fritter my money away on lost causes and that he won’t go off to fight dragons when we’ve got guests to dinner.’

Bea had married the eldest son of a fellow mill owner less than a year later, whom she’d declared, in one of her frank letters to Deborah, at that time once again incarcerated in her guardian’s house, would do very well. Deborah’s correspondence with her friend—with all of her friends—had been one of the many things Jeremy had taken from her. It was not that he had forbidden her to write, but that she had no longer been able to bear to paint a bright gloss on the dreadful reality of her own marriage. And now, though Jeremy had been dead two years, it was too late.

The melancholy which had been haunting her these last months and which had intensified, as ever, during her annual visit to Kinsail Manor settled upon Deborah like a black cloud. Jeremy’s death had been far from the blessed release she had anticipated. Of late, she had come to feel as if she had simply swapped one prison for another. Loneliness yawned like a chasm, but she was afraid to breach it for she could not bear anyone to know the truth—even though that meant eventually the chasm would swallow her up.

She was not happy, but she had no idea what to do to alter that state—or, indeed, if she was now capable of being anything else. Isolated as she was, at least when she was alone she was safe, which was some consolation. No one could harm her. She would not let anyone harm her ever again.

A breeze caught at her mantle, whipping it open. Goosebumps rose on her flesh as the cool night air met her exposed skin. She had been lost in the past for far too long. She would not sleep, of that she was certain, but if she did not get back into the house she would likely catch a cold and that would of a surety not do. It would give Lady Margaret, the Earl’s downtrodden wife, whose desperation made her seek any sort of ally, an excuse to beg Deborah to prolong her stay.

Head down, struggling to hold her cloak around her, Deborah made haste towards the side door to the east wing and was directly under the long drawing room when a scuffling noise gave her pause. She had no sooner looked up and caught sight of a dark, menacing figure, seemingly clinging to the sheer wall of the Manor, when it fell backwards towards her.

The bracket holding the drainpipe loosened as he was still some fifteen feet or so from the ground. Deciding not to take a chance on the entire thing coming away from the wall, Elliot let go, trusting that his landing would be cushioned by the grass. He did not expect his fall to be broken by something much softer.

‘Oof!’

The female’s muffled cry came from underneath him. Her ghostly pale face peered up at him, her eyes wide with shock, her mouth forming a perfect little ‘o’ shape.

Elliot felt the breath he had knocked out of her caress his cheek before he quickly covered her mouth with his hand. ‘Don’t be afraid, I mean you no harm, I promise.’

Delicate eyebrows lifted in disbelief. Heavy lids over eyes which were—what colour? Brown? He could not tell in this light. Fair brows. Her hands flailed at his sides. Her body was soft, yielding. He was lying on top of her—quite improperly, he supposed. At the same moment he realised that it was also quite delightful. She seemed to be wearing nothing but a shift beneath her cloak. He could feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest. Her mouth was warm against his palm. For a second or two he lay there, caught up in the unexpected pleasure of her physical proximity before several things occurred to him at once.

She was most likely the Countess of Kinsail.

She would definitely raise the alarm as soon as she possibly could.

If he was caught he would go to the gallows.

He had to leave. Now!

In one swift movement Elliot rolled on to his feet, pulling the distracting female with him. Still with one hand covering her mouth, he put his other around her waist. A slim waist. And she was tall, too, for a lady. The Earl was a fortunate man, damn him. ‘If I take my hand away, do you promise not to scream?’ he asked, keeping his voice low.

A lift of those expressive brows and an indignant look which could mean no or it could mean yes.

Elliot decided to take the risk. ‘Did I hurt you? I wasn’t expecting you to be there—as you can imagine,’ he said.

‘That makes two of us.’

Her voice was husky—but then it would be, for he’d just knocked the wind out of her. She had an unusual face, an interesting face, which was much better than beautiful. A full mouth with rather a cynical twist to it. No tears nor any sign of hysterics, and her expression was rather haughty, with a surprising trace of amusement.

Elliot felt the answering tug of his own smile. ‘Delightful as it was—for me, at least—I did not intend to use you to soften my landing.’

‘I am happy to have been of value.’ Deborah looked at him through dazed eyes. ‘What on earth were you doing?’ she asked, realising as she did so that it was an amazingly foolish question.

But he didn’t look like a common housebreaker—not that she knew what housebreakers looked like! She should surely be screaming out for help. Of a certain she should be afraid, for she held his fate in her hands and he must know it, yet she felt none of those things. She felt—a dreadful, shocking realisation, but true—she felt intrigued. And unsettled. The weight of him on top of her. The solid-packed muscle of his extremely male body. The touch of his hand on her mouth.

‘What were you doing, halfway up the wall of the Manor?’

Elliot grinned. ‘Exactly what you suspect I was doing, I’m afraid, Lady Kinsail.’

Now was definitely the time to cry for help, yet Deborah did not. ‘You know me?’

‘I know of you.’

‘Oh.’ Conscious of her curl papers and her nightshift, she struggled to pull her mantle back around her. ‘I didn’t dress for—I did not expect to meet anyone,’ she said, feeling herself flushing, trusting to the gloom that it would go undetected.

‘Nor did I.’

The housebreaker chuckled. A low, husky growl of a laugh, distinctively male, it sent shivers over Deborah’s skin. He had a striking face, strong-featured, with heavy brows, deep grooves running down the side of his mouth, and eyes which looked as if they had witnessed too much. A fierce face with a discernible undercurrent of danger. Yet those eyes suggested compassion and even more improbably, given the circumstances, integrity. A memorable face, indeed, and an extremely attractive one. She met his gaze and for a few seconds the air seemed to still between them. A connection, a frisson, something she could not name, sparked.

‘I’m sorry to have alarmed you,’ he said finally, ‘but if you must blame anyone for my presence here you must blame your husband.’

Deborah began to wonder if perhaps she was dreaming. ‘But Jeremy—my husband—is …’

‘A m ‘But Jeremy—my husband—with a twisted smile. ‘I must thank you for not calling out. I am in your debt.’ He knew he should not, but he could not resist. ‘Let me demonstrate my gratitude.’ When he pulled her to him she did not resist. The touch of her lips on his was warm, sweet and all too fleeting. He released her extremely reluctantly. ‘I must go,’ he said roughly. ‘And you, madam, must do as you see fit.’

‘Wait a minute. I don’t even know what your name is.’

The housebreaker laughed again. ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.’

He was already fleeing across the lawn. Staring after him in utter bemusement, Deborah remained stock still, watching the shadowy figure melt into the darkness. The stable clock chimed the hour. Above her, she could hear the sharper chimes of another clock. Looking up, she saw the window of the long drawing room was wide open. The French clock—it must be that she could hear. She touched her fingers to her mouth where the housebreaker had kissed her. Kissed her! A common thief!

No. Housebreaker he might be, but he was most certainly not common. His voice was that of an educated man. He had an air about him of someone used to command. The greatcoat which enveloped him was of fine wool. And, now she thought about it, his boots were of an excellent cut and highly polished. He smelled of clean linen and fresh air and only very slightly of sweat and leather and horse. She supposed he must have tied his steed up somewhere close by. She listened intently, but could hear nothing save the rustle of the breeze as it tugged at the bare branches of the trees.

She should wake the Earl. At the very least she should alert the servants. Deborah frowned. Whatever the man had stolen must have been concealed about his person, for he’d carried no sackfull of loot. Papers, perhaps? Despite the arduous task of setting Jeremy’s estates to rights—a task which his cousin never ceased to complain about—Lord Kinsail continued to play an active role in the government. Was the housebreaker a spy? That certainly made more sense, though the war was so long over there was surely no need for such subterfuge. And he had neither looked nor sounded like a traitor.

Deborah’s laugh, quickly stifled, had an unwelcome note of hysteria in it. She had no more idea of what a spy should look like than a housebreaker.

None of it made sense. It occurred to her rather belatedly that the thing which Lord Kinsail would consider made least sense of all was her own presence in the grounds, in her night clothes, at four in the morning. He’d want to know why she’d made no attempt to raise the alarm immediately—what could she say when she didn’t know the answer to that question herself? It wasn’t as if the thief had threatened her. She hadn’t felt scared, exactly, more … what?

The thought of having to suffer Jacob’s inquisition made up her mind. She would not give him any more reason to treat her with disdain. In fact, Deborah decided, making her way hurriedly to the side door, the time had come to break free from Lord Kinsail and this blighted place. Small consolation—very small—but her failure to provide Jeremy with an heir had one advantage. She had no real obligation to maintain close ties with his family. Lord Kinsail might grudge her every penny of the miserly widow’s portion which he doled out irregularly, and only after several reminders, but she doubted he could ultimately refuse to pay it. In any case, she was determined to find a way to survive without it. This would be her last visit to Kinsail Manor and damn the consequences!

Feeling decidedly better, Deborah fastened the door carefully behind her and fled up the stairs to her chamber on the third floor. Whatever it was the bold housebreaker had taken would be discovered in the morning. He was already gone, and her rousing the household now would not bring him back.

She yawned heavily as she discarded her mantle and unlaced her muddy boots, pushing them to the back of the cupboard out of sight of the inquisitive maid. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she made a face. Despite her hair curlers, that look on the housebreaker’s face just before he kissed her had been unmistakable. Not that she was by any stretch of the imagination an expert, but she was sure, none the less. He had wanted her.

Heat washed over her. What would it be like to submit to someone like that? Deborah pulled the bedclothes up around her, too beguiled by this thought to notice the cold. Desire. She wrapped her arms around herself, closed her eyes and recalled the velvet touch of his lips on hers. Beneath her palms her nipples budded. Behind her lids wanting flared the colour of crimson. Desire. Sharpened by its very illicitness. Desire of the dark, venal kind which roused Bella Donna, the heroine of the novels which were currently scandalising the ton, to shocking heights of passion. Desire such as she had never shared.

Desire. Deborah slipped down into the welcoming dark embrace of the bed, her hands slipping and sliding down over the cotton of her nightdress. And down. Closing her eyes tighter, she abandoned herself to the imagined caresses of a virile and skilled lover.

She awoke much later in the morning than usual, dragging herself up from the depths of slumber to the hue and cry of a household in a state of pandemonium. Slipping into a thick kerseymere gown, for Kinsail Manor, owing to a combination of its age and its current incumbent’s frugality, was an uncomfortably draughty place, Deborah sat at her mirror to take out her curl papers. Her straitened circumstances meant she could not afford the luxury of a personal maid, and, though Lady Kinsail had begged her to make use of her own dear Dorcas, Her Ladyship’s ‘own dear Dorcas’ was in fact an exceedingly dour creature, who believed a widow’s hair should be confined under a cap and kept there with a battalion of hairpins—the sharper the better.

Since she had perforce been attending to her own toilette for most of her adult life, Deborah made short work of gathering her long flaxen tresses high on her head and arranging her curls in a cluster over one shoulder. Her gown she had fashioned herself, too, in plain blue, with not a trace of the French work, furbelows and frills so beloved of Ackerman’s Repository.

She had resented her blacks when Jeremy died, resented the way they defined her as his relic, but it had taken her a full six months after the designated year of mourning to cast them off all the same, for she had come to appreciate the anonymity they granted her. It was then she had discovered that she lacked any identity at all to fill the gap. Like the anonymous gowns of blues and browns and greys she now wore, neither fashionable nor utterly dowdy, she felt herself indeterminate, somewhat undefined. Like an abandoned canvas, half painted.

An urgent rap at the door interrupted this chastening thought. ‘Please, Your Ladyship, but His Lordship asks you to join him in the long drawing room urgently.’ The housemaid, still clad in the brown sack apron she wore to lay the morning fires, was fairly bursting with the important news she had to impart. ‘We’ve all to assemble there,’ she informed Deborah as she trotted along the narrow corridor which connected the oldest—and dampest and coldest—wing of Kinsail Manor with the main body of the house, built by Jeremy’s great-grandfather. ‘The master wants to know if anyone heard or saw him.’

‘Heard who?’ Deborah asked, knowing full well that the girl could only mean the housebreaker.

She should have woken Jacob, she knew she should have, but she could not find it in her to regret this oversight. If she was honest, there was a bit of her—a tiny, malicious, nothing-to-be-proud-of bit of her—which was actually quite glad. Or, if not glad, at least indifferent. Jacob had taken everything from her that Jeremy had not already extorted. Whatever precious thing had been stolen, she could not care a jot. What was more, she decided on the spur of the moment, she was going to continue to keep her mouth firmly shut. She would not admit to wandering the grounds. She would not provoke one of his sermons. She would not!

‘I’m sorry—what were you saying?’ Deborah realised the maid had been talking to her while her thoughts had been occupied elsewhere. They were outside the drawing room now. The door stood wide open, revealing the gathered ranks of Lord Kinsail’s household. At the head of the room, under his own portrait, stood the man himself.

‘Best to go in, My Lady,’ the maid whispered. ‘We’re last to arrive.’ She scuttled over to join the rest of the maidservants, who were clustered like a nervy flock of sheep around the housekeeper. Mrs Chambers, a relic from Deborah’s days as chatelaine, cast her a disapproving look.

Inured to such treatment, Deborah made her way to the top of the room to join the Earl. The frame of the portrait swung open on its hinge to reveal the safe. Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. Jeremy had shown it to her when they were first married, though in those days it had been concealed behind a portrait of his father.

‘Empty coffers,’ Jeremy had said to her. ‘Though not for much longer—thanks to you, my darling wife.’

The revelation that the terms of her inheritance would force him to wait several years for her to attain her majority and gain the larger part of her fortune had not been the beginning of his change in attitude towards her, but after that he’d ceased to pretend.

She should never have married him. But there was no time for her to become entangled in that morass yet again. Lady Kinsail, even more palely loitering than ever, was seated on a gilt chair almost as frail as herself. Deborah went to her side.

‘Cousin Margaret,’ she said, squeezing Her Ladyship’s cold hand between her own. Though she persistently refused to grant Lord Kinsail the appellation of cousin, she had conceded it to his wife. They were not related, but it rescued them from the hideous social quagmire of having two Countesses of Kinsail in the one household. ‘What, pray, has occurred?’

‘Oh, Cousin Deborah, such a dreadful thing.’ Lady Kinsail’s voice was, like her appearance, wraith-like. ‘A common housebreaker—’

‘No common housebreaker,’ her lord interrupted. Under normal circumstances Lord Kinsail’s complexion and his temper had a tendency towards the choleric. This morning he resembled an over-ripe tomato. ‘I don’t know what time you call this, Cousin,’ he fumed.

‘A quarter after nine, if the clock is to be trusted,’ Deborah replied, making a point of arranging her own chair by his wife and shaking out her skirts as she sat down.

‘Of course it’s to be trusted. It’s Louis Quatorze! Say what you like about the French, but they know how to turn out a timepiece,’ Lord Kinsail said testily. ‘I have it upon good authority that that clock was originally made for the Duc d’Orleans himself.’

‘A pity, then,’ Deborah said tightly, ‘that such an heirloom is no longer in his family. I abhor things being taken from their rightful owners.’

Lord Kinsail was pompous, parsimonious, and so puffed-up with his own conceit that it was a constant surprise to Deborah that he did not explode with a loud pop. But he was no fool.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘If you had served my cousin better as a wife, then the estates which you allowed him to bring to ruin upon that ill-fated marriage of yours would not now be my responsibility, but your son’s. If you had served my cousin better as a wife, Cousin Deborah, I have no doubt that he would not have felt the need to seek consolation in the gaming houses of St James’s, thus ensuring that his successor had hardly a pair of brass farthings to rub together.’

Deborah flinched, annoyed at having exposed herself for, cruel as the remarks were, there was a deep-rooted part of her, quite resistant to all her attempts to eradicate it, which believed them to be true. She had made Jeremy about as bad a wife as it was possible to make. Which did not, however, mean that she had to accept Jacob’s condemnation—she was more than capable of condemning herself. And she was damned if she was going to apologise for her remark about the clock!

‘Don’t let me hold you back any further, Jacob,’ she said with a prim smile.

Lord Kinsail glowered, making a point of turning his back on her and clearing his throat noisily before addressing the staff. ‘As you know by now, we have suffered a break-in at Kinsail Manor,’ he said. ‘A most valuable item has been taken from this safe. A safe which, I might add, has one of the most complex of new locks. This was no ordinary robbery. The brazen rogue, a menace to polite society and a plague upon those better off than himself, was no ordinary thief.’

With a flourish, His Lordship produced an object and waved it theatrically in front of his audience. There was a gasp of surprise. Several of the male servants muttered under their breath with relief, for now there could be no question of blame attaching itself to them.

At first Deborah failed to understand the import of the item. A feather. But it was a most distinctive feather—long with a blue-and-green eye. A peacock feather. The man who had dropped from the sky on top of her last night must have been the notorious Peacock!

Good grief! She had encountered the Peacock—or, more accurately, the Peacock had encountered her! Deborah listened with half an ear to Jacob’s diatribe against the man’s crimes, barely able to assimilate the fact. She watched without surprise as in turn every one of the servants denied hearing or seeing anything out of the ordinary, just as the servants in every one of the Peacock’s other scenes of crime had done. No one had ever disturbed him in the act. No one had ever caught so much as a fleeting glance of him leaving. Private investigators, Bow Street Runners—all were completely flummoxed by him. He came and went like a cat in the night. For nigh on two years now, the Peacock had eluded all attempts to capture him. No lock was too complex for the man, no house too secure.

With the room finally empty of staff, Lord Kinsail turned his attentions back to Deborah. ‘And you?’ he demanded. ‘Did you see anything of the rogue?’

She felt herself flushing. Though God knew she’d had opportunity aplenty, she had never grown accustomed to prevarication. ‘Why would I have seen anything?’

‘I know all about your midnight rambles,’ Lord Kinsail said, making her start. ‘Aye, and well might you look guilty. I am not the fool you take me for, Cousin Deborah.’ He permitted himself a small smile before continuing. ‘My head groom has seen you wandering about the park like a ghost.’

‘I have never taken you for a fool, Jacob,’ Deborah replied, ‘merely as unfeeling. I take the air at night because I have difficulty sleeping in this house.’

‘Conscience keeps you awake, no doubt.’

‘Memories.’

‘Spectres, more like,’ Lord Kinsail replied darkly. ‘You have not answered my question.’

Deborah bit her lip. She ought to tell him, but she simply could not bring herself to. All her pent-up resentment at his quite unjustified and utterly biased opinion of her, combined with her anger at herself for lacking the willpower to enlighten his ignorance, served to engender a gust of rebelliousness. ‘I saw nothing at all.’

‘You are positive?’

‘Quite. You have not said what was stolen, Jacob.’

‘An item of considerable value.’

Alerted by his decidedly cagey look, Deborah raised an enquiring brow. ‘Why so close-mouthed? Was it government papers? Goodness, Jacob,’ she said in mock horror, ‘don’t tell me you have you lost some important state secret?’

‘The item stolen was of a personal nature. A recent acquisition. I do not care to elaborate,’ Lord Kinsail blustered.

‘You will have to disclose it to the Bow Street Runners.’

‘I intend to have the matter investigated privately. I have no desire at all to have the Kinsail name splashed across the scandal sheets.’

Deborah was intrigued. Jacob was looking acutely uncomfortable. A glance at Margaret told her that Her Ladyship was as much in the dark as she was. She was tempted—extremely tempted—to probe, but her instinct for caution kept her silent. That and the fact that she doubted she would be able to sustain her lie if interrogated further.

The sensible thing to do would be to make good her escape while Jacob was distracted, and Deborah had learned that doing the sensible thing was most often the best.

Getting to her feet, she addressed herself to Lady Kinsail. ‘Such a shocking thing to have happened, Cousin Margaret, you must be quite overset and wishing to take to your bed. In the circumstances, I could not bear to be a further burden to you. I think it best that I curtail my visit. I will leave this morning, as soon as it can be arranged.’

‘Oh, but Cousin Deborah, there is no need—’

Lord Kinsail interrupted his wife. ‘I trust you are not expecting me to foot the bill if you decide to travel post?’

‘I shall go on the afternoon stage,’ Deborah replied coldly. ‘If you can but extend your generosity to providing me with transport to the coaching inn …’

‘Cousin Deborah, really, there is no need …’ Lady Kinsail said, sounding just a little desperate.

‘If that is what Cousin Deborah wants, my dear, then we shall not dissuade her. I shall order the gig.’ Lord Kinsail tugged the bell. ‘In one hour. I trust you will not keep my horses waiting?’

‘I shall make my farewells now to ensure that I do not,’ Deborah replied, trying to hide her relief. ‘Cousin Margaret.’ She pressed Her Ladyship’s hand. ‘Jacob.’ She dropped the most marginal of curtsies. ‘I wish you luck with recovering your property. Thank you for your hospitality. I must make haste now if I am to complete my packing in time. Goodbye.’

‘Until next year,’ Lady Kinsail said faintly.

Deborah paused on the brink of gainsaying her, but once again caution intervened. If there was one thing the Earl loathed more than having his cousin’s widow as a house guest, she suspected it would be having his cousin’s widow turn down his hospitality.

‘So much can happen in a year,’ she said enigmatically, and left, closing the door of the long drawing room behind her for what was, she fervently hoped, the very last time.

Chapter Two

London, three weeks later

Elliot stifled a yawn and fished in his waistcoat pocket for his watch. Five minutes off two in the morning and his friend Cunningham was showing no inclination to leave. The atmosphere in the gambling salon of Brooks’s was one of intense concentration disturbed only by the chink of coin, the glug of a decanter emptying, the snap of cards and soft murmurings as the stakes were raised. The gamblers were much too hardened to betray anything so crass as emotion as the stack of guineas and promissory notes shifted across the baize from one punter to another.

Some of the cardplayers wore hats to shield their faces. Others tucked the ruffles of their shirt sleeves up under leather cuffs. Elliot, who had been used to gambling with his life for far higher stakes, could not help finding the whole scene slightly risible. He had placed a few desultory bets at faro earlier, more for form’s sake than anything, but the last hour and a half had been spent as a spectator.

Restlessly pacing the long room, with its ornately corniced concave ceiling from which a heavy chandelier hung, the candles in it guttering, he called to mind the many similar reception rooms across Europe he had visited. Cards were not the game which had attracted him to such places. In the midst of war, cards were a means for his men to while away the long hours between battles. Civilians didn’t understand the boredom of war any more than they understood its visceral thrill. He had no idea why Cunningham could ever have thought he would be amused by a night such as the one they had just spent. Carousing and gambling left Elliot cold. No doubt when Cunningham rose from the tables he would be expecting to indulge in that third most gentlemanly pursuit, whoring—another pastime which held no interest for Elliot. He was a gentleman now, perforce, but he was, first and foremost his own man, and always had been—even in the confines of his uniform. Elliot had had enough.

‘I find I have had a surfeit of excitement, my dear Cunningham,’ he said, tapping his friend lightly on the shoulder. ‘I wish you luck with the cards. And with the ladies.’

‘Luck doesn’t come into it, Elliot. You of all people should know that. Never met a devil more fortunate with the fairer sex than you.’

‘Never confuse success with good fortune, my friend,’ Elliot replied with a thin smile. ‘I bid you goodnight.’

He collected his hat and gloves and headed out into St James’s, doubting he’d be making much use of his new club membership in the future. It was a cold night, dank and foggy, with only a sliver of moon. A housebreaker’s kind of night, though it was much too soon to be thinking about that.

Kinsail’s diamond had proved rather difficult to dispose of. Elliot’s usual fence had refused to have anything to do with such a distinctive stone, forcing him into an unplanned trip to the Low Countries where he had, reluctantly, had it cut and re-faceted before selling it on. The resultant three diamonds had garnered far short, collectively, of what Lord Kinsail was rumoured to have paid for the parent. But then, Kinsail had paid the inflated premium such contraband goods commanded, so Elliot’s thief-taker had informed him. More important—far more important—was the price Kinsail was now paying for his dereliction of duty to the British army.

Not that he knew that, of course, any more than he really understood the price paid by that army for his neglect. Men such as Kinsail saw lists demanding horses, mules, surgeons. Other lists requiring field guns, cannons, rifles, vied for their attention, and more often won. But what use was one of the new howitzers when there were no horses to haul it into battle? What use were muskets, Baker rifles, bayonets, when the men who would wield them lay dying on the battlefields for want of a horse and cart to carry them to a field hospital? For want of a surgeon with any experience to tend to them when they got there? What did Kinsail and his like know of the pain and suffering caused by their penny-pinching. The ignorance which led them to put guns before boots and water and bandages?

Elliot cursed, forced his fists to uncurl. Even now, six years later, Henry’s face, rigid with pain, haunted him. But what did Kinsail and his like know of that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And even if he could, by some miracle, paint the picture for them, it would give them but a moment’s pain. Far better to hit them where it hurt—to take from them what they valued and use it to fund what really mattered. Those diamonds, even in their cut-down form, would make an enormous difference. That miserly bastard Kinsail would never know that his jewel had, by the most dubious and complex route, gone some way to make reparation for his war crimes.

As ever, following what he liked to think of as a successful mission, he had scoured the newspapers for word of the robbery, but Lord Kinsail had, unsurprisingly, declined to make public his loss. For perhaps the hundredth time since that night Elliot wondered what, if anything, Lady Kinsail had said about their encounter. For what seemed like the thousandth time the memory of her pressed beneath him flitted unbidden into his mind. The feel of her mouth on his. The soft, husky note to her voice. That face—the haughty, questioning look, the big eyes which had shown not one whit of fear.

He should not have kissed her. He had thought, as he fled the scene of his crime, that she had kissed him back, but had come to believe that mere wish fulfilment. She had simply been too startled to resist. After all, as far as she was concerned he was a thief. But why had she not cried foul?

The bright gas lighting of Pall Mall gave way to the dimmer and appropriately shadier braziers around Covent Garden. Thin as London was of company this early in the year, there seemed to be no shortage of customers for the wretches forced to earn their living on the streets. A scuffle, a loud cry, then a cackle of laughter rent the air as a man was dumped unceremoniously on to the steps of a brothel. Shaking his head at a questioning pock-marked street walker, Elliot pressed a shilling into her filthy hand and made haste across the market square, ignoring her astonished thanks.

The stark contrast between the homes of the gentlemen who frequented the privileged clubs of St James’s and the hovels and rookeries which were home to London’s whores, whom those same gentlemen would visit later, made him furious. He had seen poorer and he had seen sicker people abroad, but this—this was home, the country he had served for nigh on sixteen years. It shouldn’t be like this. Was this what twenty-odd years of war had won them?

In the far corner of the square he spied something which never failed to make him heartsick. Just a man asleep in a doorway, huddled under a worn grey blanket, but the empty, flapping ends of his trousers told their story all too well. The low wooden trolley against which he rested merely confirmed it. To the callused, scarred legacy of guns and gunpowder on his hands would be added the scraping sores caused from having to propel himself about on his makeshift invalid cart. He stank, the perfume of the streets overlaid with gin, but to Elliot what he smelled most of was betrayal.

‘May God, if God there be, look down on you, old comrade,’ he whispered.

Careful not to disturb the man’s gin-fuelled slumber, he slipped a gold coin into the veteran’s pocket, along with a card bearing a message and an address. To many, charity was the ultimate insult, but to some—well, it was worth trying. Elliot never gave up trying.

Weary now, he made his way towards Bloomsbury, where he had taken a house. ‘The fringes of society,’ Cunningham called it, ‘full of Cits.’ He could not understand Elliot’s reluctance to take a house in Mayfair, or even a gentleman’s rooms in Albemarle Street, but Elliot had no desire to rub shoulders with the ton any more than he desired to settle down, as his sister Elizabeth said he ought. Said so regularly and forcefully, Elliot thought with a smile as he passed through Drury Lane.

They were surprisingly alike, he and his sister. Almost twelve years his junior, Lizzie had been a mere child when Elliot joined the army. He had known her mostly through her letters to him as she was growing up. As their father’s health had declined and war kept Elliot abroad, Lizzie had shouldered much of the responsibility for the overseeing of the estate as well as the care of her fast-failing parent. Knowing full well how much her brother’s career meant to him, she had refrained from informing him of the true nature of affairs back home until their father’s demise had become imminent. Touched by her devotion, Elliot had been impressed and also a little guilt-ridden, though Lizzie herself would have none of that, when he had finally returned for good after Waterloo.

‘I have merely done my duty as you did yours. Now you are home the estates are yours, and since Papa has left me more than adequately provided for I intend to enjoy myself,’ she’d told him.

She had done so by marrying a rather dour Scot, Alexander Murray, with rather indecent haste, after just three months of mourning. The attachment was of long standing, she had informed her astonished brother, and while her dearest Alex had agreed that she could not marry while her papa was ailing, she’d seen no reason for him to wait now that Papa had no further need of her. Lizzie had emerged from her blacks like a butterfly from a chrysalis—an elegant matron with a sharp mind and a witty tongue, which made her a popular hostess and an adored wife. Matrimony, she informed her brother at regular intervals, was the happiest of states. He must try it for himself.

Russell Square was quiet. Bolting the door behind him, Elliot climbed wearily up to his bedchamber. After tugging off his neckcloth, neatly folding his clothes—an old military habit, impossible to shake—Elliot yawned and climbed thankfully between the cool sheets of his bed. Another hangover from his military days: to have neither warming pan nor fire in the room.

He had no wish to be manacled in wedlock. It was not that he didn’t like women. He liked women a lot, and he’d liked a lot of women. But never too much, and never for too long. In the courts of Europe loyalty to one’s country came before loyalty to one’s spouse. In the courts of Europe the thrill of intrigue and adventure, legitimised by the uncertainty of war, made fidelity of rather less import than variety.

‘Living in the moment,’ one of his paramours, an Italian countess, had called it. Voluptuous Elena, whose pillow talk had been most enlightening, and whose penchant for making love in the most public of places had added an enticing element of danger to their coupling. That time in the coach, coming back from the Ambassador’s party … Elliot laughed softly into the darkness at the memory. It had been later, in another country, in another coach and with another woman—this one rather less inclined to court public exposure—that he had realised how practised had been Elena’s manoeuvres. Her ingenious use of the coach straps, for example. He had obviously not been the first and he was without a doubt that he had not been her last.

He wondered what Elena was doing now. And Cecily. And Carmela. And Gisela. And Julieanne. And—what was her name?—oh, yes, Nicolette. He could not forget Nicolette.

Except he could hardly remember what she looked like. And the others, too, seemed to merge and coalesce into one indistinct figure. He missed them all, but did not miss any one in particular. What he really missed was the life, the camaraderie. Not the battles, for the thrill of the charge was paid for in gore and blood. Nor the pitiless reality of war either—the long marches, the endless waiting for supplies which did not come, his men stoically starving, clad in threadbare uniforms, footwear which was more patches than boot. Killing and suffering. Suffering which continued still.

Elliot’s fists clenched as he thought of the old soldier in Covent Garden. One of thousands. No, he’d had more than enough of that.

What he missed was the other, secret part of his army career, as a spy behind enemy lines. The excitement of the unknown, pitting his wits against a foe who did not even know of his existence, knowing that before he was ever discovered he would be gone. The transience of it all had made living in the moment the only way to survive. The pulsing, vibrant urgency of taking chance upon chance, the soaring elation of a mission pulled off against the odds. He missed that. The pleasure of sharing flesh with flesh, knowing that, too, was transient. He missed that also. Since coming home he had taken no lover. He would not take a whore, and somehow, in England, taking the wife of another man seemed wrong.

Abstinence had not really troubled him. He had encountered no woman who had stirred him beyond vague interest until his encounter with Lady Kinsail.

Elliot sighed as her face swam into his mind again and his body recalled hers. Between his legs, his shaft stirred. Dammit, he would never sleep now! That smile of hers. That mouth. His erection hardened. What would it feel like to have that mouth on him, licking, tasting, sucking, cupping? Elliot closed his eyes and, wrapping his hand around his throbbing girth beneath the sheets, gave himself over to imagining.

Deborah stood undecidedly on the steps of the discreet offices of Freyworth & Sons in Pall Mall. It was early—not long after ten—a pretty day for March, and she longed to stretch her legs and mull over the rather worrying things which Mr Freyworth had said. It was true, her writing had of late become more of a chore than a pleasure, but she had not been aware, until he had pointed it out, that her general ennui had transferred itself on to the page. Stale. That was how her publisher had described her latest book. Knitting her brow, Deborah was forced to acknowledge the truth of what he said. Perhaps her imagination had simply reached its limit?

Across from her lay St James’s Park, and a short way to the left was Green Park. There would be daffodils there. Not the sort of freshness Mr Freyworth was demanding, but perhaps they would help inspire her. She could walk over Constitution Hill, then carry on into Hyde Park and watch the riders.

Even at the end, when money had been as scarce as hens’ teeth at Kinsail Manor, Jeremy had found the funds to keep his horses. Riding had always been a solace to Deborah, though these days it was, as with most things, a pleasure she could only experience vicariously.

She had no maid to accompany her, which when she was married would have been a heinous crime, but a combination, she believed, of her widowhood, her impoverished state and the bald fact that she possessed no maid, had allowed her a relative freedom which she cherished. In fact it was rather her self-possessed air, the invisible wall which she had built around herself, which made it only very occasionally necessary for Deborah to rebuff any man who approached her. For her charms were not so recondite as she imagined, and nor was she anywhere near so old, but of this she was blissfully unaware.

In the Green Park, the fresh grass of the gently rolling meadows made her feel as if she was far from the metropolis. Her mind wandered from her business meeting back to that night, as it had done on countless occasions in the days which had elapsed since. Though she had scoured both The Times and the Morning Post on her visits to Hookham’s circulating library in Bond Street, she had found no mention of the theft from Kinsail Manor. Jacob had been as good as his word.

The shifty-eyed investigator who had come calling at her lodgings in Hans Town had been equally reticent. She had absolutely no idea what had been stolen save that it was small, definitely not papers, and definitely extremely valuable. What? And why was Jacob so intent on silence? And how, when he was so intent, had the housebreaker discovered the presence of whatever it was in the safe when even Jacob’s wife had no idea of its existence?

The housebreaker who had kissed her.

Deborah paused to admire a clump of primroses, but her gaze blurred as the cheerful yellow flowers were replaced by a fierce countenance in her mind’s eye. Try as she might, she had been unable to forget him. Unable and unwilling, if she was honest. In the secret dark of night he came to her and she seldom had the willpower to refuse him. Never, not even in the early days with Jeremy, before they were married, when she had been so naïvely in love, had she felt such a gut-wrenching pull of attraction. Who and why? And where was he now? She had no answers, nor likely ever would, but the questions would not quit her mind. His presence had fired her imagination.

Reaching the boundary of the Green Park, she made her way across the busy thoroughfare of Piccadilly towards Hyde Park, with the intention of walking along Rotten Row to the Queen’s Gate. Carriages, horses, stray dogs, urchins, crossing sweepers and costermongers made navigating to the other side treacherous at the best of times, but Deborah wove her way through the traffic with her mind fatally focused elsewhere.

The driver of an ale cart swerved to avoid her.

She barely noticed the drayman’s cursing, but on the other side of the road Elliot, emerging from Apsley House where he had been petitioning Wellesley—he never could think of him as Wellington—froze. It was her! He was sure of it—though how he could be, when he had not even seen her in daylight, he had no idea.

But it was most definitely Lady Kinsail and she was headed straight for him—or at least for the gates to the park. She was dressed simply—even, to his practised eye, rather dowdily for a countess. The full-length brown pelisse she wore over a taupe walking dress was bereft of trimming, lacking the current fashion for flounces, tassels and ruffles. Her hair, what he could see of it under the shallow poke of her bonnet, was flaxen. She was tall, elegant and slender, just as he remembered. In the bright sunlight, her complexion had a bloom to it, but her expression was the same: challenging, ironic, a little remote. Not a beautiful woman—she was too singular for that—but there was definitely something about her, the very challenge of her detachment, that appealed to him.

He should go. It would be madness to risk being identified. But even as he forced himself to turn away he caught her eye, saw the start of recognition in hers and it was too late.

Elliot, who had in any case always preferred to court trouble than to flee from it, covered the short distance between them in several quick strides. ‘Lady Kinsail.’ He swept her a bow.

‘It is you!’ Deborah exclaimed. She could feel her colour rising, and wished that the poke of her bonnet were more fashionably high to disguise it. ‘The housebreaker. Though I have to say in the light of day you look even less like one than when you—when I …’

‘So very kindly broke my fall,’ Elliot finished for her. ‘For which I am most grateful, believe me.’

Deborah blushed. ‘You expressed your gratitude at the time, as I recall.’

‘Not as thoroughly as I’d have liked to.’

‘I didn’t tell,’ she blurted out in confusion.

‘That I kissed you?’

‘No. I mean I didn’t report you. I should have. I know I should have. But I didn’t.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Elliot stared at her in astonishment.

Her eyes were coffee brown, almost black, with a sort of hazel or gold colour around the rim of the iris. A strange combination, with that flaxen hair. The pink tip of her tongue flicked out along the full length of her lower lip to moisten it.

He dragged his eyes away. They were in danger of making a show of themselves, standing stock still at the busy entrance gates. Taking her arm, he ushered her into the park. ‘Let’s find somewhere more private, away from the crowds.’

Deborah tingled where his fingers clasped her arm. It was most—strange. In a nice way. So nice that she allowed herself to be led down one of the more secluded paths without protest.

He was taller than she remembered. In daylight his countenance was swarthy, the colour of one who had spent much time in the sun. The lines around his eyes, too, which gave him that fierce quality, looked as if they came from squinting in bright light. Snatching a glance up at him, she noticed a scar slicing through his left eyebrow, and another, a thin thread on his forehead just below the hairline. A soldier? Certainly it would explain his bearing, the upright stance, the quick stride which even her long legs were struggling to keep up with.

He was exceedingly well dressed, in a rich blue double-breasted tailcoat with brass buttons, and the snowy white of his cravat was carefully tied, enhancing the strong line of his jaw, the tanned complexion. Brown trousers, black boots, a single fob, a beaver hat—though the crown was not tall enough to be truly fashionable. His toilette was elegant but simple. Like herself, he eschewed ostentation, though unlike herself his reason did not appear to be lack of funds. Housebreaking must be a lucrative profession.

No, she could not bring herself to believe that he stole in order to dress well. Whatever reason he had for breaking into houses, it was not avarice. It appealed to her sense of irony that the famous Peacock was decidedly no peacock. Maybe his choice of calling card was deliberately self-mocking.

‘What is so amusing?’ Elliot brought them both to a halt by a rustic bench facing the sun.

‘Just an idle thought.’

‘We can sit here awhile,’ he said, after carefully wiping the wood down with his kerchief. ‘As long as the sun prevails we shall not get cold.’

Obediently, Deborah sat down. There were so many things she wanted to ask, but as she stared up at him she was too overwhelmed by the reality of him, which was so much more than the memory of him, to order her thoughts properly. ‘Are you really the Peacock?’

A word from her in the right ear and he would be dancing on the end of a rope at Tyburn. Though so far she had of her own admission said nothing. ‘Yes,’ Elliot replied, ‘I really am the Peacock.’

‘When I saw Jacob holding up the feather I could scarcely believe it.’

It was a small bench. Elliot’s knees touched her leg as he angled himself to face her. A spark of awareness shot through him at the contact. He remembered the way she’d felt beneath him. He remembered, too, the things he’d imagined her doing to him since and prayed none of it showed on his face. He had to remind himself that she was married. Married! In England, that mattered.

‘Why?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Why did you say nothing to your husband?’

‘You mentioned him during our first conversation—if it could be called a conversation,’ Deborah said with a frown. ‘You said that I must blame him, or some such words. Blame him for what? What has Jeremy to do with your breaking into Kinsail Manor?’

Jeremy! It had slipped his mind, but he remembered now that was the name she’d given Kinsail. ‘You mean Jacob, surely?’ Elliot said, also frowning. ‘Jacob, the Earl of Kinsail. Your husband.’

Her eyes widened with surprise and she burst into a peal of laughter, brimming with amusement like a champagne flute full of bubbles. Then, as if she was quite unused to the sound, she stopped abruptly. ‘I am not the current Lady Kinsail. Jacob is my husband’s cousin, the Fifth Earl. Jeremy was the fourth.’

‘Was? You’re a widow?’ She was a widow!

‘Of some two years’ standing,’ the widow replied.

‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am to hear that.’ The words were out before he could stop them.

‘I doubt very much that the pleasure you take from my status could rival mine.’

‘That, if you don’t mind my saying so, was an even more telling remark than my own.’

Deborah coloured. ‘I am aware of that.’

‘It was not a love-match, then, I take it?’

‘No. Yes. I thought it was. I was just eighteen when we met—my head stuffed full of romantic fancies, as foolish and unworldly as it’s possible to imagine a person could be—and Jeremy was … seemed to be … well, he swept me off my feet, to put it in the sort of terms I’d have used myself then,’ Deborah said with a twisted smile. ‘When Jeremy proposed I thought all my birthdays had come at once. My guardian—my uncle—my parents died when I was very young—was only too glad to be able to wash his hands of me, so we were married three months after we met. I thought myself wildly in love, but it was all a sham. Jeremy was only interested in my money. Pathetic, isn’t it? I don’t know why I have told you all this, but you did ask.’

‘I think it’s sad, not pathetic. Were you very unhappy?’

Deborah shrugged. ‘I was very naïve and very set upon the match. I was not the only one who suffered as a result. I should never have married him. You know, this is all rather boring. Do you mind if we change the subject?’

Her husband sounded like a complete bastard. Elliot couldn’t understand why she was so determined to lay the blame on herself but, much as he wished to probe deeper, her closed look was back. He doubted he would get anywhere. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘You didn’t,’ Deborah replied, tilting her chin and sniffing.

He wanted to kiss her then, for that defiant little look. Actually, he’d wanted to kiss her before that. ‘You know, you don’t look a bit like a dowager,’ Elliot said lightly. ‘Not a trace of grey hair, you don’t dab at your eyes with a black lace kerchief, or sniff at your smelling salts, and I’ve seen not a trace of an obnoxious little lap dog—unless he’s too precious to be allowed outside in the cold. The Dowager Countess of Kinsail.’ He shook his head. ‘No, it’s just not you.’

He was rewarded with a weak smile. ‘I prefer not to use the title. It’s Deborah Napier. And if I don’t look like a dowager you look even less like a housebreaker.’

‘Deborah. Now, that suits you. I am Elliot Marchmont, known to a very select few as the Peacock.’

‘What was it you stole, may I ask? Only Jacob has not let on, for some reason.’

‘For a very good reason,’ Elliot said drily. ‘I suppose there is no harm in telling you, since you already have my fate in your hands. It was a diamond. A large blue diamond, reputedly cut from the original French crown jewels. Kinsail came by it in what one might call a rather roundabout and unorthodox manner.’

‘You mean illegally? Jacob?’ Deborah squeaked.

‘Why do you look so surprised?’

‘Because he’s a sanctimonious, parsimonious prude who is never happier than when condemning others for lack of principles or morals or—well, anyway—’ She broke off, realising she had once again forgotten her golden rule of keeping her feelings strictly under wraps. This man unsettled her. ‘How did you know about it?’

‘I have my sources.’

‘Goodness. Do you mean those people they call fences? The ones who live in the Rookeries?’ Deborah asked, using with relish the cant she had only ever written.

‘I have to say, for an upstanding member of the aristocracy you seem to have an unhealthy interest in the seamy underbelly of society.’

‘I prefer to attribute it to a vivid imagination. Is it true what they say? That there is not a safe in England you cannot break?’

‘I have not yet encountered one,’ Elliot said, rather taken aback by her reaction, which seemed to be fascination rather than disapproval.

She was sitting on a bench in Hyde Park in broad daylight with the notorious Peacock. She should be calling the authorities. But instead of being in fear for her life she looked intrigued—excited, even. He had the distinct feeling that he had in Deborah Napier, Dowager Countess of Kinsail, met someone almost as subversive as he was himself.

‘I wish you would tell me all,’ she said, as if to confirm his thoughts. ‘Why do you do it? What is it like to pit your wits against the world as you do? Are you ever afraid of being caught?’

She had not asked him what he’d done with the diamond. Surely that was the first question any woman would have asked? But she seemed to have no real interest in the outcome, only the method. Just like him—well, at least in part.

‘There’s always a chance,’ Elliot replied, beguiled by the way her eyes lit up. ‘But if it was no risk it would not be worth doing. That is part of it for me—the excitement, knowing that one false move could be an end. There’s nothing like it. Not since …’

‘The army?’

‘How did you know that?’

‘The way you walk. The scars on your face.’ Deborah touched his brow, felt a jolt at the contact and drew her hand away quickly. ‘The first time I met you I thought you were a man used to being in command. Were you a soldier for long?’

‘Sixteen years. We ran off when I was just fifteen, me and my school friend Henry. Like you, he was orphaned, only his father had made no provision for him. In the same week he lost his family and his place at school. He was to be apprenticed to a lawyer.’ Elliot laughed. ‘Henry—a lawyer. Nothing could be more unlikely. He decided he would enlist instead, and I decided to go with him because by then I’d had enough of school and the notion of returning to the family estates and learning from my father how to take up the reins sounded like purgatory. So we ran off together, lied about our ages.’

‘What about your parents?’

‘My mother was dead. My father was not particularly happy, but we were not yet at war at that point, and I persuaded him that it would be good for me to learn some independence and some discipline. He bought me my first commission. Then the wars with Napoleon came, and by that time I’d discovered I had a talent for soldiering. The army was my family. In a way it was selfish of me, but by that time my loyalty to my men was such that—to be frank—I could not have left while there was a war to be won. To his enormous credit, my father supported me in that. I was a major when I resigned my commission after Waterloo. My only regret is that my father died just six months after I returned home.’

‘It must have been very difficult for you to adjust to civilian life after all that time.’

‘Yes, it was. Very.’ Her perception surprised Elliot. ‘People don’t really see that.’

‘People never do. I was nineteen when I married. When Jeremy died I found I had no idea who I was. Two years later I’m still not sure.’

‘I came home to take up the mantle of my family estates, to settle down into the quiet country life I’d joined up to avoid in the first place. Not much more than two years ago and I’m still not sure, either, who I am. I’m not a soldier any more, but I’m pretty damn sure that I’d die of boredom as a country squire.’

‘So you’ve taken up housebreaking instead? Is that it?’ Deborah asked, looking amused.

‘Partly.’

‘I wish I’d thought of something as exciting, but I lack the skills. How came you to acquire them? Is it part of basic army training, lock-picking?’

Elliot laughed. ‘No, but the British army is made up almost entirely of volunteers, you know. You’d be astonished at the skills one can learn from the men.’

‘Is that how you came about your contacts, too?’ Deborah chuckled. ‘I do not recall reading in the newspapers that the war against Napoleon was won by fences and pickpockets and the like.’

‘The war was won by poor bastards from all walks of life who enlisted because they had the misguided belief that at the end of it they would have made a better life for themselves and their families,’ Elliot said grimly. ‘The same poor bastards you see begging on the streets now—those of them who made it home.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Deborah said, taken aback by the sudden change in him. ‘I did not mean to make light of it. You must have lost some good friends.’

‘Yes.’ Surprised by the urge to confide in her, Elliot took a deep breath. ‘Sorry.’

‘You have no need to be. I should have known better. Time makes no difference with such scars, does it? A year, two—people think you should have forgotten.’

‘I won’t ever forget.’

‘Nor I,’ Deborah said softly.

She recognised that tone. And the look in his eyes—the darkness, suffering, guilt. She wondered what it was that had put it there. It went too deep to be solely down to the horrors of war. But though she was tempted to ask, she did not. Something about him—a shuttered look, a reticence—warned her off. Besides, questions begat questions. She did not wish to reveal why it was she understood him.

‘What do you do with your time?’ Elliot asked. ‘Despite what you said, you don’t give the appearance of one who is enjoying her widowhood.’

‘I am still becoming accustomed,’ Deborah said with a shrug. ‘It is not what I expected—not that I was actually planning for it, because Jeremy was only six-and-thirty. I mean, I did not murder him or anything like that.’

‘But you thought about it?’

‘Well, only by way of diversion when I was …’ Writing my first book, she had been about to say.

Deborah stared at Elliot, aghast. He was trying not to smile. The corner of his mouth was quivering with the effort of restraining his laughter.

‘It’s not funny. That was a shocking thing to make me say,’ she said, trying to hide the quiver in her own voice.

‘I did not make you say anything.’

‘You know, I wish you would take me with you,’ Deborah said impulsively.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Just once. I wish I could accompany you—the Peacock. It would be—I don’t know—marvellous.’ And perhaps inspiring, Deborah thought.

Elliot burst out laughing. ‘Marvellous! I’ve heard my escapades described in many ways, but marvellous has never been one of them. You are the most original woman I have ever met.’

‘Yes? I take that as a huge compliment, I think. Have you met many women?’

‘Many. They’ve asked me many things, too,’ Elliot said wickedly. ‘But not one of them has shown an interest in housebreaking.’

‘Well, I am very interested in housebreaking,’ Deborah said, trying not to think about the many voluptuous and experienced women Elliot had met. ‘Will you consider it?’

‘Consider—good God. You are not serious?’

She could not quite believe it herself, but it seemed she was. For one night, she would step out of her shadow, cast off the ghosts which haunted her and act as boldly as her literary alter ego. In fact, she would be Bella. It was perfect. Just exactly the boost her writing needed to stop it from stagnating.

Deborah’s eyes positively sparkled. ‘You have no idea how much,’ she said.

Elliot seemed to find her enthusiasm amusing. He was laughing—a deep, gruff sound which shivered over her skin. She found herself staring at his mouth. His knee pressed into her thigh through the cambric of her dress. Little ripples of heat spread from the contact. Up.

‘Will you take me?’ she asked, half-joking, half-something else she chose not to acknowledge.

Elliot couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth. She smelled of spring and flowers and something more elusive. He leaned closer. There were just the tiniest traces of lines around her eyes. He’d thought her three- or four-and-twenty, but she must be older. That darkness that lurked at the back of her eyes was experience. She was a widow. He couldn’t possibly kiss her here, in the park. But she was a widow. So not married. Or not any more. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to do a lot more than that.

‘Elliot, will you take me?’

She was serious! He sat back, blinked, pulled his hat from his head, looked at it, put it back again. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘It’s not ridiculous,’ Deborah said, too taken up with the outrageous idea to care how wild it sounded, to notice the reckless edge to her voice. This was what she wanted. This was what she’d been waiting for. Excitement—enough to jolt her out of her melancholy. And experience. The authenticity it would lend to her story would give Bella Donna a new lease of life. ‘Please, Elliot.’

Her hand was on his coat sleeve. Her gloves were worn. His own were new. He hated wearing gloves. He wanted to feel her skin. ‘No,’ he said, shaking her hand away. ‘I could not possibly …’

‘Why not? Are you afraid I would mess things up for you? I would not, I promise, I would do only as you instructed.’

For a few wild seconds he imagined it—the pair of them in cahoots. Her presence would lend a wholly new edge to the thrill of the escapade. What the devil was he thinking? ‘Madness,’ Elliot exclaimed, leaping to his feet. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking. To risk the gallows …’

‘It would not come to that. It never has yet—you are too clever for that.’ She couldn’t understand why, but she had to persuade him. ‘Please. My life is so—you have no idea. I can’t explain, but if I could just—I want to feel alive!’

Elliot had no difficulty in recognising that particular sentiment. It was still madness and he still had no intention of agreeing, but he couldn’t help empathising with what she said. ‘Deborah, it’s impossible,’ he said gently.

‘It’s not.’ Desperation made her ruthless. ‘I want to come with you the next time. In fact, I am determined to come with you; if you do not agree I will inform upon you.’

This he had not anticipated. God dammit, he couldn’t help admire her daring. She must want this very badly. He wondered why. That fatal curiosity of his. Elliot tried valiantly to stifle it. ‘You would be unwise to do so. By your silence, you have already implicated yourself. I could say that you were my accomplice.’

‘Oh!’ The wounded look Deborah gave him was almost comical. The resolute set to her mouth which followed, the straightening of her shoulders, was not. ‘It is a risk I’m prepared to take.’

‘It seems to me that you’re prepared to take a great many risks.’

‘You think so? You don’t know me very well.’

The light went out of her so quickly it was almost like looking at a different person. One minute she was sparkling, the next bleak. He recognised the edge of desperation which made her reckless. She was a fascinating mixture.

It would be madness to consider doing as she asked. He was only thinking about it because he wanted her. He wanted her a lot. And she wanted him too—though she would no more acknowledge it than her real reasons for wishing to break into a house with him. If he did not take her, what then? He could not possibly be considering this.

Slowly, he began to shake his head.

‘No! Please, don’t say no. I mean it, Elliot—if you say no I will inform on you.’

Really, he could not imagine a more original female. She was quite as ruthless in her own way as he was. Elliot’s smile was a slow curl, just the one side of his mouth. His finger traced her determinedly set lips. The pulse at her throat fluttered. He felt the shallow intake of her breath, but she did not flinch. Ridiculous, but what he thought he saw in her was a kindred spirit. One who stood on the edge of society. It was absolute madness even to be considering doing as she asked.

‘You won’t persuade me with threats,’ he said softly. ‘If I take you, it will be because I want to.’

The words made Deborah shiver. Did he want her? Want her? No one had ever wanted her like that. ‘And do you—want me?’ she asked. Because it was exactly what Bella Donna would have said, and because if she let herself think like Deborah she’d turn tail and flee and regret it for the rest of her days, and she was sick, sick, sick of regrets.

Looking round swiftly to check they were quite alone, Elliot pulled her to him, a dark glint in his eyes. ‘You are playing a very dangerous game, Deborah Napier. I would advise you to have a care. For if you dance with the devil you are likely to get burnt. You may come with me, but only if you promise to do exactly as I say.’

‘You mean it!’ Oh, God, he meant it! She would be a housebreaker. A thief!

Since this rather vital aspect hadn’t actually occurred to her until now, Deborah wavered. But her failing to take part would not avert the crime. And if their victim was like Jacob most likely he would deserve it anyway, or could easily afford the loss. And Bella needed this, and she needed Bella, and Elliot was waiting for an answer. She would never get another chance. Never!

‘I promise,’ she said. ‘I’ll do exactly as you say.’

‘Then prove it. Kiss me,’ Elliot said audaciously, not thinking for a moment that she would.

But she did. Without giving herself time to think, her heart hammering against her breast, Deborah stood on tiptoe, pulled his head down to hers, and did as she was bid. Right there in Hyde Park, in the middle of the day, she kissed him.

Chapter Three

She meant it as a kiss to seal their bargain, but as soon as her lips touched his memories, real and imagined, made the taste of him headily familiar. Elliot’s hands settled on her hips, pulling her closer. Deborah linked her gloved hands around his neck, enjoying the lean length of his body hard against hers, just as before, in the dark of night, when he had landed on top of her.

His lips were warm on hers, every bit as sinfully delicious as she’d imagined, coaxing her mouth to flower open beneath his, teasing her lips into compliance, heating her gently, delicately, until his tongue touched hers. She shuddered, felt rather than heard his sharp intake of breath. The kiss deepened, darkened, and Deborah forgot all about her surroundings as Elliot’s mouth claimed hers, as he pulled her into the hard warmth of his body, so close that she could feel the fob of his watch pressing into her stomach, smell the starch on his neckcloth.

It was a kiss like none she had ever tasted, heated by the bargain it concluded, fired by the very illicitness of their kissing here in a public space, where at any moment they could be discovered. She could not have imagined, could not have dreamed, that kissing—just kissing—could arouse her in this way. She had not thought it possible—had not even attributed such an awakening to Bella Donna.

The clop of a horse passing on the other side of the high hedge penetrated the hazy mists of her desire-fuelled mind. Deborah wrenched herself free even as Elliot released her. They stared at each other, breathing heavily. He tugged at his neckcloth as if it were constricting him. Her gloved hand touched her lips. They felt swollen.

Elliot picked his hat up from the ground where it had fallen, striving for a nonchalance he was far from feeling. The reality of Deborah Napier’s kisses made a poor shadow of his fantasies. It was complete folly, unbelievably risky, but if this intriguing creature wanted to join forces with his alter ego he could not refuse her.

He wanted her. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about that, but he was sure he wanted to do something. Not that that was why he was going to agree to this madness. He was doing it for her. To relieve the darkness behind those beguiling eyes. To release her, if only temporarily, from the emotional embargo she seemed to have placed upon herself. That was the only reason. The main one, certainly.

‘Are you quite sure you want to do this?’ he asked.

Still dazed and confused by the delights of lip on lip, tongue on tongue, struggling to tamp down the shocking and wholly new passion which their kiss had lit, Deborah was not at first sure what he was asking. Then the meaning of his question sank home, and she smiled. It was not the tight, polite smile behind which she usually hid, but a wide, true smile which lit her eyes, wiping the haughty expression from her face and with it several years.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘I’m sure.’

A week went by before she heard from him again. A week when sanity took hold in the light of day and Deborah wondered what on earth had possessed her to suggest this wild escapade.

Housebreaking and stealing—the simple fact that they were illegal should be suffice to prevent her even contemplating them. Her conscience told her so several times a day, her head warned her of the possible consequences, yet her heart would listen to none of it. Whether she accompanied him or not, the Peacock would commit the crime. He was never caught. And even if she was discovered, there was the sad, indisputable fact, that she couldn’t make herself see the difference between the prison she already inhabited and gaol, no matter how often she told herself there was an enormous difference.

Had her doubts been more constant they would have prevailed, but the problem was they were fickle things, dissolving whenever she took up her pen, or played out her encounter with Elliot again, or with the coming of dusk. Excitement took hold of her then. Jagged and dangerous like one of the saw-toothed swords she had seen in an exhibition at Bullock’s Museum in Piccadilly, it was fatally enticing. For the first time in a very long time, she really wanted something.

She knew what she contemplated was reckless beyond belief, but still the logic of this failed to take root. She wanted the visceral thrill. She wanted to feel her blood coursing through her veins. She wanted to feel alive. And besides, she owed it to Bella, whose existence had seen her through the darkest of days, to gild her latest story with as much authenticity as possible.

In truth, when Deborah’s heart quailed at the prospect of aiding and abetting the Peacock, it was Bella’s ruthless courage which bolstered her. It was through Bella’s eyes that she peered out into the dimly lit street from her drawing-room window some eight days after that encounter in the park, her heart fluttering with fear—not of what was to come, but of what she would feel if Elliot did not turn up.

His promise, so reluctantly given, could so easily be reneged upon. She knew nothing of him, after all, and despite his having surrendered his name, she had made no enquiries, having neither trusted friends nor trusted servants. Had he been similarly reticent? It hadn’t occurred to her until now that he might ask about her, though it should have. Jeremy’s title meant nothing to her; the penurious state in which he had left her made it easy for her to fade into the background of a society she had never really been permitted to inhabit even when he was alive, but she was still, unfortunately, the Dowager Countess of Kinsail. And though Jeremy had been gone two years, the scandal of his debts, his premature death, were not so easily buried as his corpse.

Deborah clenched her fists inside the pockets of the greatcoat she wore. Elliot would not judge her. It wasn’t possible—no one knew the murky details of her marriage. He would come. He had given his word and he had not the look of a man who would break a promise. Casting a quick glance out at the empty street, she retrieved the note from behind the clock, scanning the terse content by the light of the single candle.

It is set for tonight. I will call for you at fifteen minutes past midnight. If you have changed your mind, send word with the boy.

No signature. No address. The boy referred to was the street urchin who had delivered the note earlier in the day. Surely, surely, surely, if Elliot Marchmont had reservations about her, he would not have sent such a note? After all, even if she did know where he lived—which she did not—she was hardly likely to come hammering on his door, demanding that he fulfil his promise. It had been a test, this silence, a test of trust, and she had not failed. He would come, she told herself. He cared naught for her past, and why should he? Besides, she thought defiantly, returning to her vigil at the window, it was not Deborah, Dowager Countess of Kinsail, who would be his aider and abettor, any more than it was Elliot Marchmont who would commit the crime. Tonight it was the Peacock and Bella Donna.

She smiled into the darkness and let go the last of her doubts as the clock chimed the hour. Midnight. The witching hour. The hour of transformations and magic. Bella’s hour. Deborah’s reservations must bide their time until morning.

She was waiting for him on the doorstep. He saw the pale glimmer of her hair, stark against the dark of her clothing, as he rounded the corner. Elliot was not sure whether to be glad or sorry. No, that was a lie, he knew perfectly well how he felt, and it was the direct opposite of what he ought to. Something like a ripple shimmered through his blood as he strode quickly across the street. Reckless, foolish, crazy as it was to be taking her with him, it was what he wanted. It wasn’t just that he was curious, and it wasn’t just that he desired her either—not wholly, though that was part of it. He didn’t know what it was. The unknown, maybe? Something different? Something more? He didn’t care. What mattered now, at this moment, was that she was here and her very presence made everything sharper, more attenuated.

She was wearing some sort of greatcoat. Her smile was tremulous. No gloves. Her hands, when he took them in his, were icy. ‘It’s not too late, you can still change your mind,’ Elliot said softly, but Deborah shook her head, gave him that look, that haughty, determined one. Did she know what a challenge it was? He doubted it. ‘Are you sure?’

‘You sound as if you’re the one who’s having second thoughts.’

‘I should be, but I’m not,’ Elliot replied.

Looking up at him, Deborah felt that kick-in-the-stomach pull of attraction. He was not handsome, his face was too hard for that, but he was charismatic. She pulled her hand from his. ‘Where are we going?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Have you a carriage? A horse?’

‘It’s not that far.’

Deborah sucked in her breath. ‘You mean we’re going to—here, in town? But isn’t that …’

‘Risky? Wasn’t that rather the point?’

She shivered. She had imagined a house like Kinsail Manor. The dark of night. The silence of the country. For a few seconds, reality intruded. Streetlamps. Night watchmen. Late-night revellers. And surely more locks, bolts and servants to contend with.

‘Having second thoughts, Lady Kinsail?’

His mocking tone made her stiffen. ‘No. And don’t call me that.’

‘Deborah.’

The way he said her name, giving it a dusky note it had never contained before, made her belly clench. His nearness threatened to overset her. She pushed back her greatcoat in an effort to distract herself. ‘What do you think of my clothing? Is it appropriate for a housebreaker?’

The breeches and boots revealed long, long legs. Blood rushed to Elliot’s groin. He tried not to imagine what her derrière would look like, tried not to picture those fabulous legs wrapped around him. Was she wearing corsets beneath that coat? ‘It’s very …’ Revealing? Erotic? Stimulating? Dear God! ‘Very practical,’ he said, dragging his eyes away. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d done this before.’

‘I found the clothes in a trunk in the house when I moved in. They must have belonged to the previous tenant. I kept them, but he never came back for them. He must have been quite a small man, for they are a perfect fit, don’t you think?’

She pushed the greatcoat further back and posed for his inspection, quite oblivious of the effect her display of leg was having on him. ‘I think we had best make tracks,’ Elliot said brusquely.

Pulling the greatcoat back around her and jamming her hat on to her head, Deborah hurried after him as he crossed the road. ‘Where are we going? What are we going to steal? Whose house is it?’ Her questions were breathless for she was struggling to keep pace with him as they skirted the beginnings of the new buildings to the east of Hans Town, avoiding the main thoroughfares, heading towards Hyde Park.

‘The less you know the better,’ Elliot replied.

Her booted feet stumbled on the mix of cobbles and mud as they wended north along mews and through stables. The houses grew grander as they passed Berkeley Square. Crossing Mount Street and into another mews, Deborah’s nerves began to take hold. When Elliot pulled her down a shallow flight of steps and into the shelter of the basement wall, she looked up and up and up at the massive building in front of which they stood, and thought she might actually be sick. ‘This is Grosvenor Square,’ she whispered.

Elliot nodded. She caught the gleam of his smile and remembered her first impression of him. Dangerous. Her fear was dissipated by anticipation, pounding through her veins in a rush. ‘Is this it?’ she asked, looking with awe at the elegant town house, the rows of windows like blank, sleeping eyes.

‘This is your last chance to change your mind. After this there is no going back, do you understand?’

He was standing close enough for her to sense his excitement. It was contagious. Her stomach felt as if it were tied in a knot. Deborah nodded.

Elliot’s laugh, the low growl she had first heard in the grounds of Kinsail Manor, quivered over her. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘now listen very carefully.’

Slowly, methodically, he went over the details of his plan, details she realised he could only have compiled as a result of thorough observation and reconnaissance. He had an impressive eye for minutiae. She understood now why it had taken him over a week to contact her. She listened so carefully she scarcely dared breathe before reciting each step back to him slowly, painstakingly, a frown furrowing her brows, determined to miss nothing, to prove herself worthy.

‘Good. You have an excellent memory,’ Elliot said, when she had repeated it a second time.

‘You are impressively well prepared,’ Deborah returned with a grin.

‘Know your territory. I’ve had plenty of practice.’

‘Another unexpected bonus of your army training, no doubt. If only they knew.’

‘And yet another is that I expect to be obeyed. Remember that.’

He spoke lightly, but she was in no doubt that he meant it, nor in any doubt that he had always achieved absolute obedience. It was not fear of retribution, but implicit trust that would have inspired the same loyalty in his troops which she felt stirring her courage. A determination not to let him down, to live up to the expectations he had of her. ‘Understood,’ Deborah said, with a mock salute which made him smile.

The watch called the hour from the other side of the mews. Across the way, a candle flame reflected in the dimpled glass of a window pane was snuffed out. Above, the town house was in complete darkness. ‘They are early to bed, our occupants,’ Elliot whispered. ‘And early to rise too.’ When he awoke tomorrow, the Minister would be the poorer and the men he had deprived would be his beneficiaries. Justice of the sort which the government seemed incapable of delivering would be served. The glow of satisfaction warmed him. ‘Ready?’ he asked Deborah.

She nodded. Her eyes glittered in the dim light. He leaned towards her, pressing a swift kiss to her icy lips. ‘Let’s go.’

Though the lock was easily picked, the door on to the mews was bolted on the inside, as he had expected. The lower windows were barred. The wave of crime which the upright citizens of London blamed on the soldiers they had once revered had weighted the coffers of locksmiths and ironmongers, who did a roaring trade these days in providing protection against the poor wretches who had perforce resorted to theft. Nodding to Deborah to assume her post as lookout at the top of the steps on to the mews, Elliot untied the length of rope from his waist and attached the little hook which had been made by the regiment’s smithy to his own design. The cotton which was wrapped around it muffled the report as the hook found its mark on the first throw. Testing it with a sharp tug, Elliot climbed swiftly to the second floor. The lock on this window gave way to his jemmy. It was the work of moments to pull in the rope, detach the hook, close the window, jump lightly down from the sill and make his way stealthily back down into the bowels of the house.

Deborah was waiting at the door as he slid the bolts back. She slipped silently into the narrow corridor and followed him back through the flagstoned kitchen where the banked fire provided a modicum of light, into the gloom of the servants’ staircase and up.

He dared not use his lantern. Behind him, Deborah, obviously as able to see in the dark as he was, did not stumble. He was impressed by her courage and excited by her presence there in his shadow.

The painting was in the study, at the back of the house adjacent to the room he had first entered. ‘An early study of Philip the Fourth,’ Elliot whispered to Deborah. ‘It’s bigger than I remember. But then, the last time I saw it, it was hanging in a rather larger house.’

She stared at the decidedly ugly subject, resplendent in black and silver. She could see it was beautifully executed, but she could not like it. ‘You said you’ve seen it before?’

‘In Madrid. In the house of one of our senior Spanish allies.’

‘Then how did it get here?’

Elliot shrugged. ‘Plunder. A gift. A bribe. I don’t know,’ he said, pressing the button which released the blade of his knife. Quickly, he cut the painting from its heavy frame and rolled it up before handing it to Deborah.

She took it gingerly. ‘How did you know where to find it?’

‘I have my sources.’

‘You said that before.’

He caught her wrist and pulled her close. ‘This may well be a game to you, but you have to realise, you’re playing with fire. If we are caught …’

‘We won’t be. You’re the Peacock, you never have been yet.’

Her utter confidence in him was flattering, there was no denying it, but a tiny noise outside the door distracted him. Quickly, Elliot pulled Deborah towards the cover of the window curtains. ‘Hush!’

His hand covered her mouth. Her back was pressed into his body. Her heart thudded much too loud. She listened hard, but could hear nothing save the rasp of her own breathing, the softer whisper of his. The curtains smelled musty. They waited, motionless, for what seemed like aeons. Her nose tickled. She was acutely conscious of him, tensed behind her. She was inappropriately conscious of her legs, her bottom, her back, moulded against the front of his body. Everything felt stretched, more real, and yet unreal. The air crackled with tension. Between them, an invisible cord of awareness. She had never felt more alive.

She felt him relax before he moved his hand from her mouth. ‘What …?’

He turned her around. She caught the gleam of his smile, heard the little huff of his chuckle. ‘I thought I heard someone, but it must have been a rat.’

Deborah shuddered. ‘I hate rats.’ Elliot laughed again. She felt it this time, vibrating in his chest against hers. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘You follow me across London in the middle of the night dressed as a man, break into a house and steal a priceless painting with barely a tremble, but a rat makes you shiver. Would you rather we’d encountered the master of the house? He is a rat of an altogether different order.’

‘I’d rather we didn’t encounter anyone.’

‘Then we should make haste.’ From his pocket, Elliot produced the feather and handed it to Deborah. ‘My calling card. Will you do the honours?’

She placed it carefully on the ledge of the empty frame. ‘You made this seem so easy,’ she said.

Elliot, who had been in the process of retrieving his grappling hook from the floor, heard the note of disappointment in her voice. It was ridiculous to add danger to risk, but he sensed it was danger she craved. Hastily, he cut his grappling hook free of its rope and crammed it into his pocket, before securing the long cord by twisting it around the gilded legs of the heavy marble-topped table which filled the window embrasure. ‘Give me the painting,’ he said.

Deborah handed over the rolled canvas. ‘Aren’t we going back down the stairs?’

‘You’ll get a more authentic experience leaving this way. If you dare, that is,’ Elliot replied. They were two storeys up, nothing for one so used to shimmying up and down ropes, but as Deborah leaned cautiously out of the window and peered down, he saw the sheer drop through her eyes. ‘We’ll use the stairs,’ he said, making to pull the rope in.

She stayed his hand. ‘Absolutely not! You’re quite right, what is the use in half an experience?’ she said. ‘Just show me what to do.’

‘You could be badly hurt if you fall.’ Elliot was already regretting having teased her. He should have known she would rise to the challenge.

‘I could hang if we’re caught,’ Deborah retorted. ‘I’ll take my chances.’

She was deliberately courting danger. He recognised that, because he did it so often himself. The tilt of her chin, the determination in her voice made it impossible for him to deny her, much as he knew he ought. She seemed always to have this effect on him. A connection between them crackled and briefly flared. ‘Very well,’ Elliot said, tearing his eyes away, ‘I’ll go first, that way I can catch you if you fall. Watch what I do. Wait until I’m on the ground before you come out.’

A clock chimed in the hallway outside the room, making Deborah jump. ‘What if someone comes?’

Elliot picked up her hat and jammed it back on her head. ‘They won’t. You’re perfectly safe, you’re with the Peacock, remember? Now pay attention. It’s all in the way you hold the rope.’

Deborah watched, heart drumming, as he showed her what to do with her hands and feet. Her palms were damp as she leaned out, seeing him disappear swiftly down, making it seem effortless. It was a long way. If she fell—but she would not fall. She cast another glance over her shoulder at the door. She listened hard, but could hear nothing. The room seemed larger, darker, much more sinister without Elliot’s presence. Fear crept stealthily up from her booted feet, winding its way like a vine, making her legs shake, her hands too. The urge to turn tail, to flee out of the door, down the servants’ staircase to the kitchen, was almost overwhelming. Only the stronger fear, that without Elliot to guide her she would be lost, overturn something, rouse the household, kept her rooted to the spot. Right at this moment, she effectively held his life in her hands. She would not let him down. She would not!

Determination to prove herself worthy uprooted her feet. Deborah’s heart still pounded so hard and fast she felt faint, but she bit her lip hard, wiped her damp palms on her breeches and sat gingerly on the edge of the sill. Elliot was already on the ground, looking up anxiously. She waved. The ground swam. Don’t look down!

She grasped the rope as he had shown her. She edged out. Her legs dangled in the air. Breathing quickly to still the panic, she floundered for the rope with her feet, found it, gripped it tight between her thighs. Her arms were surely too frail to support her. She dangled, half in, half out of the window, for a dreadful moment. Then she kicked away from the ledge and began to descend. Slowly she went, shakily, her hands burning on the rope, losing it, retrieving it, gripping tighter. Her shoulders ached. Her thighs, too. Down. Slowly down, looking neither up at the window nor towards Elliot. One floor. If she fell now, she would probably survive. A broken limb or so. Small consolation. Don’t think about falling. Down. Her arms felt as if they would part company with her shoulders. Thank heavens she wore breeches. Even so, she would be bruised. Down.

‘Not far to go now. Hold on.’

Elliot’s voice sounded strained, for the first time that night. Deborah risked a downward glance. Her foot dangled about a yard from his upturned face. Relieved and triumphant, she grinned. ‘Did you think I would fall on you? As you did at Kinsail Manor?’

Elliot grabbed her ankle. ‘It crossed my mind!’

She covered the final few feet quickly, safe in the knowledge that he had her. If he had not held her when she landed, she would have sunk to the cobbles, for her legs felt as if the bones had been removed. ‘Sorry.’ She clutched at Elliot’s coat. ‘I just need …’

Anxiously casting a glance to the end of the mews where the rumbling of a carriage slowed, Elliot put his arm around her waist. ‘We must make haste. If anyone comes—that rope is rather a giveaway, I’m afraid.’

Guiltily, Deborah realised she hadn’t even closed over the window. It gaped, wide and betraying, the rope hanging like a declaration. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, straightening, ignoring the pain shooting through her legs and taking a stumbling step towards the other end of the mews. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to walk.

‘Not too fast, or we will draw unwanted attention. Push your hat down over your face.’ Elliot caught up with her, put his arm through hers. His grip tightened.

They walked together back to Hans Town through streets blanketed in silence. Now that it was over, Elliot was astounded at himself for placing Deborah in such danger. ‘I should not have brought you.’

She turned the key in her door and pushed it open. ‘Don’t say that. I’m glad you did, Elliot. It was wonderful. Please don’t say you regret it.’

‘I would be lying if I did,’ he replied gruffly.

She was safe home and it was over. Deborah was awed by her own daring, filled with an exuberance that made her want to clap her hands with glee. ‘I can’t believe we did it,’ she said. ‘We really did it. We really did!’ She felt buoyant, her delight fizzing, bubbling over, making her want to laugh so much that she had to stifle the sound with her hand.

Plucking Deborah’s hand from her mouth, Elliot pressed his lips to the palm. Her presence had added spice to the whole venture, there was no denying it. Her daring roused him. Her excitement, too. He licked the raw, slightly swollen pad of her thumb where the rope had chafed. He felt the intake of her breath. She leaned into him. His exhilaration sharpened and focused into desire, like molten metal poured into the mould of a blade. He pulled her roughly into his arms and took possession of her mouth.

It was a kiss without finesse. A hard, dangerous and demanding kiss. For a moment Deborah did not respond, shocked by the rawness of his barely leashed passion. This was not the Elliot she had kissed before, but some other, more feral creature of the night. As she was, tonight. Just for tonight.

But his ardour, the very unstoppableness of it, unleashed her inhibitions. As Elliot pressed her against her own front door, feverishly seeking the soft flesh concealed beneath the constricting layers of her clothing, Deborah kissed him back. Her tongue clashed with his, her mouth opened to him and she returned his kiss with a fervour that cut them both free of thought and control. Where he led she followed. When he kissed her more deeply, his tongue penetrating, thrusting, she kissed him back, her tongue duelling with his, her lips clinging.

Never, ever, not even in her darkest fantasies, had Deborah been kissed like this. Never had she kissed like this. Not even Bella had kissed like this, for Bella was at heart a creature driven by colder, darker motives than plain passion. Deborah’s kisses, like Elliot’s, were pure passion in that moment, wild and fierce, abandoned kisses, transporting them both to a place which was all red velvet and raw silk.

His mouth plundered hers, but she did not feel conquered, incited instead to return pressure for pressure, by doing so asking for more, and still more. Nothing mattered, save that she have more. It was as if everything that had transpired this night had been arrowing to this moment, as if all she had experienced had by some process of alchemy transformed itself into this white-hot lust, must culminate in this rushing, tumbling, headlong flight to fulfilment.

She moaned in frustration as Elliot’s seeking fingers found only layers of clothing and buttons. He fumbled for the latch and they tumbled together into the dark seclusion of the narrow hallway, still kissing.

The back of her legs encountered the hall table. The candlestick atop it fell over. He wrested her greatcoat to the floor, his own following. Her hat and his, too, her hair unfurling. She curled her fingers into the soft silk of his skin, on the nape of his neck above his neckcloth. Warm skin. He smelled of sweat and soap. Salty and tangy. Irreducibly male.

The rasp of his chin on the soft skin of her face reminded her of the stinging sensation of the rough rope chafing her legs. She was burning between her thighs, but it had nothing to do with the descent. She wanted him there. Touching her. Plunging into her. Shocking images, vivid in their clarity despite her lack of experience, filled Deborah’s mind, making her moan. The solid ridge of his shaft was hard against her belly. Powerful. Fierce. Like the rest of him, incredibly, intensely male. Man. Elliot was all man. And such a man. She moaned again as he ground his hips against hers.

Elliot’s breath came in harsh gasps. Under her coat, Deborah wore a shirt. No waistcoat. And no corsets. Oh God, no corsets. Her nipples thrust at him through the linen. He cupped one of her breasts, his thumb stroking the delightfully hard nub, relishing the way it made her quiver, made the blood pulse in his already aching groin. Her kisses were like molten silver, burning and searing. His knees bumped against the legs of some sort of table. He picked her up, placed her on to it, spreading her legs, one hand in the heavy fall of her hair, the other on her breast, cupping, stroking, moulding. He wanted to feel her flesh. Tugging the shirt from her breeches he nudged between her legs, wrapping them around his thighs, dipping his head to taste the hard peaks of her nipple.

Her heels dug into his buttocks; her fingers plucked ineffectually at the big silver buttons of his coat. The table shook. It was just the right height to allow him to slide into her, thrusting into the welcoming heat, the slick tightness of her that would envelop him. He was so hard, the release would be spectacular. He had known it would be like this. He had known it! He put his hands around the curve of her bottom to pull her closer. She was still trying to free his coat buttons. Impatiently, Elliot yanked them open.

The crushed canvas fell on to the floor.

‘Damn!’

‘What? What was that?’ Deborah was hazily aware of a pain in her back. She tried to sit up and whatever she was perched on rocked violently. She was sitting on a table!

‘The painting,’ Elliot muttered. ‘I dropped it. I can’t see a damn thing.’

She seemed to have lost a good many of her clothes. And the painting, which they had risked life and limb for, was on the floor somewhere. Deborah slithered back down to reality considerably more quickly than she had slithered down the rope not long before. The candle she’d left for her return was on the floor somewhere, too. It would be easier to fetch another from the parlour. ‘Just a minute,’ she muttered, stumbling down the hallway, feeling her way to the door, trying to tuck her shirt back into her breeches at the same time.

Lighting the candle from the still-smouldering embers of the parlour fire, she studiously avoided looking in the mirror above the mantel as she did so, having no wish to see her shame confirmed in her wanton reflection. Concentrating on trying to get her breathing back under control, she made her way back to the hallway. Elliot was as dishevelled as she. Clothes awry. Neckcloth untied. His lips looked frayed. Such kisses! Deborah held the candle aloft, well away from her own face, turning her gaze to the floor. ‘Here it is.’ The canvas had rolled under the table. She picked it up and handed it to him, embarrassed in the frail light, mortified by her behaviour in the dark. She had more or less ravaged the man. Savaged him more like, for she clearly remembered biting into him, her nails tearing at his skin. Oh God!

Elliot made no attempt to look at the painting. He wished to hell he’d let the bloody thing lie. Another minute of those kisses of hers and he wouldn’t have given a damn. Looking at her now though, seeing the way she avoided his gaze, he knew the chances of him having another minute of her kisses were almost nil. Whatever had caused her to let go that iron control of hers was now firmly leashed.

And it was probably just as well. He, who prided himself on his finesse, had all but ravished her in the hallway, for God’s sake! To say nothing of the fact that in their lust they had forgotten all about the extremely valuable painting they had stolen. A painting which was now looking rather the worse for wear. A wholly inappropriate desire to laugh took hold of him. He struggled, but could not stifle it. ‘I’m sorry,’ Elliot said helplessly, ‘it’s just—well, ludicrous. I assure you I didn’t plan it. The last bit, I mean—at least not like that. Only you were so—and I was so—and there was the painting abandoned on the floor, after we went to such extremes to get it.’

To his surprise Deborah’s face lightened. She did not smile back, but she looked as if she might. ‘Is it always like this? After you have committed a crime, I mean? Is it always so—so intoxicating? Inflaming?’ she asked, daring to meet his gaze now.

‘I don’t know, I’ve never had an accomplice before.’

‘The painting—it’s not damaged, is it?’ Deborah asked anxiously.

Elliot unrolled the canvas and shook his head. ‘See for yourself.’ She came closer to inspect it. Her hair was perfectly straight, hanging well past her shoulders. If he looked, he would see the outline of her breasts under her shirt, for she had not put her coat back on. With a huge effort of restraint, he stopped himself.

‘Such an ugly man,’ Deborah said softly after a while of staring at the portrait. ‘I would not like to have this on my wall. Is it valuable?’

‘It’s by Velázquez. I should hope so.’

‘Will you sell it, then?’

Elliot began to roll the canvas back up, carefully this time. ‘Yes,’ he said tersely, ‘I’ll sell it.’

Deborah opened her mouth to ask what he did with the money, then thought better of it. Tiredness washed over her. Her shoulders began to ache. Anticlimax in every sense weighed like a heavy blanket, muffling her. ‘It’s late,’ she said wearily.

‘Yes.’ Elliot hesitated. He was edgy with frustration. She had been so aroused, he was sure he could easily rekindle the flame between them, but something held him back. Is it always like this? ‘It wasn’t the housebreaking that made me turn to you like that,’ he said, running his hand down the smooth cap of her hair, ‘it was you. Ever since we met, I’ve wanted you. You must know that, Deborah.’

She jerked her head away. ‘It will be light soon.’

‘I see.’ He didn’t see at all. Rebuffed, puzzled by the extreme swing in her mood, and too tired in the anticlimax to make sense of it, Elliot picked his hat up and, shrugging into his greatcoat, tucked the painting into a large inside pocket. ‘Did it work?’ he asked. ‘Did it do as you hoped, banish the black clouds, make you feel alive?’

Deborah smiled tremulously. ‘While it lasted. I shall keep a look out for reports of our heinous crime.’

‘And paste them in a keepsake book?’

‘Something like that.’

He kissed the fluttering pulse on her wrist, telling himself that her vulnerability was simply exhaustion. ‘Goodnight, Deborah.’

She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘Goodbye, Elliot. Be safe.’

The door closed softly behind him. The parlour clock struck three. Only three. Wearily, Deborah picked up her man’s coat and made her way up the creaky wooden stairs to her bed.

Outside, Elliot made his way home by a circuitous route through alleys and mews. She was like a chameleon, changing so quickly that he could not keep up with her. Her kisses. He groaned and the muscles in his stomach contracted. Such a delightful mixture of raw passion and innocence. Hot, burning kisses that even now made his blood surge and pound, yet they were neither knowing nor experienced. Deborah kissed with the savagery of a lion cub.

Elliot stood in the shadow of a stable building as the watch passed by, informing the empty street that all was well. It had frightened her, her passion; she had been far too eager to blame it on the extraordinary circumstances, as if by doing so she could distance herself from it. What kind of marriage had she had with that bastard of a fortune hunter?

He stepped out of the mews and made his way across Russell Square, letting himself in silently. A candle stood ready in the hall, reminding him of the clatter of the candlestick from the table at Deborah’s house. The evening had been full of surprises. He should not have allowed her to come down that rope, but the sight of her dangling over him had been …

Mounting the stairs, he tried to put if from his mind. He was exhausted. Carefully stashing the painting, he willed himself to think of the chain of events he must set in train to dispose of it, but as he climbed into bed, the memory of Deborah—her mouth, her hands, her breasts, those long legs, that pert derrière—climbed in with him. He was hard. Persistently hard. Lying back against the cool sheets, Elliot surrendered to the inevitable.

Chapter Four

Deborah jerked awake, exhausted from lurid dreams in which she was always in the wrong place, with the wrong person, in the wrong attire, at the wrong time. Dreams in which she was endlessly chasing the shadow of the man who had made a shadow of her. Dreams in which no one could see her, no one would acknowledge her, in which she existed only to herself. When she spoke, the words were soundless. Time and again, she tumbled into the room where he was, only to have Jeremy look straight through her.

In her dreams, she was sick from her failures, sick from knowing that no matter how hard she tried, she would fail again. The familiar weight of that failure made the physical effort of rising from her bed a mammoth task. No amount of telling herself that it was just a dream, nor any reminder that it had no basis in reality, could shift that lumpen, leaden feeling, for the truth was that Deborah believed she had failed, and it had been her fault.

Long experience had shown her that hiding under the covers and willing fresh dreamless sleep had no effect whatsoever, save to nourish the headache which lurked just under the base of her skull. Slowly, with the care of a very old woman afraid of breaking brittle bones, Deborah climbed out of bed and went through her morning ablutions, blanking her mind against the lingering coils of her monochrome nightmares, forcibly filling her head with colourful images from her adventures last night.

She winced as she soothed a cooling lotion on the chafe marks at her knees and thighs, but as she folded away the male clothing she had worn, out of sight of the daily help, her mood slowly lifted. By the time she sat down to take coffee at her desk, she was smiling to herself. Bella Donna, that vengeful, voluptuous creature of the night, would not be confined to history after all. At last, after several barren months, she had her inspiration for the next story.

What would Elliot think if he knew he was her muse? Deborah paused in the act of sharpening her pen as a lurid image of herself atop the hall table, her legs entwined around him, flooded her body with heat. Closing her eyes, shuddering at the memory of his lips, his hands, the rough grate of his jaw on her skin, she was astounded at the speed and intensity of her arousal. Had the painting not fallen, had she not fetched a light and broken the mood, she would have given herself to him. As she recalled raking her nails on his skin, urgently pressing herself against the hard length of his manhood, she turned cold. What on earth had come over her?

It would be a salve, to persuade herself that she had become so caught up in Bella Donna’s character as to have forgotten her own, but it would not be the truth. Bella Donna took her pleasures in a calculated way. Bella Donna used and discarded men as she used and discarded her various guises when she had no further use for them. Last night, Deborah had wanted, needed, desired with a purity of feeling which left no room for anything else. It frightened her. The intensity of her feelings, her lack of control, terrified her. She did not want any of it.

Ever since we met, I’ve wanted you, Elliot had said. But the circumstances in which they met were coloured each time by danger. It was surely that which made him want her, as it made her want him? Only the thrill of defying the rules, the edge which recklessness and daring gave to fear, could explain the strength of their mutual desire in its wake. Nothing else, surely, could explain why she had forgotten all the inhibitions her marriage had taught her and allowed an instinct she hadn’t known she possessed to drive her.

No, last night, she had not been Bella Donna, but neither had she been Deborah. She could not reconcile that vivid, bold creature with the one sitting at her desk in her grey gown in her equally grey life. But then, wasn’t that what she had wanted from last night’s adventure? To shed her skin, to step out of the tedium of her day-to-day existence, to escape from herself for a few hours? She had certainly achieved it beyond her expectations.

Now, though, she must get back to reality, which might very well be grey by comparison, but at least it was safe. Never mind that it was unexciting, unadventurous and above all lonely. She was used to being lonely. Most of her married life she had been lonely. And lost. And hurt. She would do well to remember how quickly the bride with stardust in her eyes had become the hated wife.

Now she was no longer a victim of her own gullibility. She was not the source of every disappointment, the cause of every misfortune. She need not hide from her friends for fear they discover her unhappiness. She need not pretend to herself that she was anything other than miserable. Guilt and insecurity need no more drive her actions than that most cruel emotion of all, love. Her life might be bland, but it was her own. Safe from feeling, maybe, but it was also safe from pain. She intended always to be safe from now on. Whatever had come over her last night, the person she had been was not the real Deborah. The experience had been a release. Cathartic. An antidote, a dose of danger to counteract the malaise of boredom. That was all, and it was over now.

Resolutely, Deborah picked up her pen. It was past midnight when Bella Donna made her way stealthily out into the night dressed in male attire, on a mission which would scandalise the ton and throw her into the orbit of the most dangerous and devastatingly attractive man in all of England, she wrote.

‘You look tired, Elliot.’ Elizabeth Murray drew her brother a quizzical look.

The resemblance between the siblings was striking enough to make their relationship obvious. The same dark, deep-set eyes, the same black hair, the same clear, penetrating gaze which tended to make its object wonder what secrets they had inadvertently revealed. Though Lizzie’s complexion was olive rather than tanned, and her features softer, she had some of her brother’s intensity and all of his charm, a combination which her friends found fascinating, her husband alluring and her critics intimidating.

‘Burning the candle at both ends?’ she asked with a smile, stripping off her lavender-kid gloves and plonking herself without ceremony down on a comfortably shabby chair by the fire.

Elliot grinned. ‘Lord, yes, you know me. Dancing ‘til four in the morning, paying court to the latest heiress, whose hand I must win if I’m to pay off my gambling debts. Generally acting the gentleman of leisure.’

Lizzie chuckled. ‘I am surprised I did not see you in the throng around Marianne Kilwinning. They say she is worth twenty thousand at least.’

Elliot snapped his fingers. ‘A paltry sum. Why, I could drop that much and more in a single sitting at White’s.’

Lizzie’s smile faded. ‘I heard that your friend Cunningham lost something near that the other night. I know it is considered the height of fashion, but I cannot help thinking these gentlemen could find better things to fritter their money away on.’

‘You’re not alone in thinking that.’

‘Did you speak to Wellington, then?’

‘He granted me an audience all right,’ Elliot said bitterly, ‘but it was the usual story. Other more pressing commitments, a need to invest in the future, resources overstretched, the same platitudes as ever.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps I’m being a little unfair. He told me in confidence that he was considering taking up politics again. Were he to be given a Cabinet post, he said he would do all he could, but—oh, I don’t know, Lizzie. These men, the same men who have given their health and their youth for their country, they can’t wait for all that. They need help now, to feed themselves and their families, not ephemeral promises that help is coming if only they will wait—we had enough of those when we were at war.’

‘Henry. I know,’ Lizzie said gently, widening her eyes to stop the tears which gathered there from falling as her brother’s face took on a bleak look. She hated to cry, and more importantly Elliot hated to have this deepest of wounds touched.

‘Henry and hundreds—thousands—of others who were brothers, friends, husbands, fathers. It makes me sick.’

‘And Wellington will do nothing?’

‘I’m sorry to say it, but at heart he’s a traditionalist. He is afraid, like Liverpool and the rest of the Tories, that too many years abroad have radicalised our men. He thinks that starving them will bring about deference. I think it will have quite the opposite effect and, more importantly, it’s bloody unjust. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t swear and I didn’t mean to bore you.’

‘Don’t be so damned stupid. You neither bore me nor shock me, and you know it. I have no truck with this modern notion that we women have no minds of our own,’ Lizzie said tersely.

She was rewarded with a crack of laughter. ‘Not something anyone could ever accuse you of,’ Elliot replied.

His sister grinned. ‘That’s what Lady Murray says.’

‘Alex’s mother is in town? I thought she never left that great big barn of a castle of theirs. Won’t she be afeart that the haggis will go to ground and the bagpipes will stop breeding without her,’ Elliot asked in an appalling attempt to mimic Lady Murray’s soft Scottish burr.

‘Very amusing,’ Lizzie said drily.

‘So what momentous event has driven her to visit Sassenach territory, then?’ To his astonishment, his sister blushed. ‘Lizzie?’

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said with her usual disregard for polite euphemisms. ‘The news that’s driven her south is the forthcoming arrival of a potential grandson and heir, if you must know.’

‘Elizabeth!’ Elliot hauled his sister from her chair and enveloped her in a bear hug. ‘That’s wonderful news.’

‘You’re squashing me, Elliot.’

He let her go immediately. ‘Did I hurt you? God, I’m sorry, I—’

‘Please! Please, please, please don’t start telling me to rest, and put my feet up, and wrapping me in shawls and feeding me hot milk,’ Lizzie said with a shudder.

‘Alex?’

‘Poor love, he’s over the moon, but when I first told him he started treating me as if I was made of porcelain. Lord, I thought he was going to have me swaddled and coddled to death,’ Lizzie said frankly. ‘You can have no idea what it took for me to persuade him we could still—’ She broke off, colouring a fiery red. ‘Well. Anyway. Alex is fine now, but his mother is a different kettle of fish. Or should I say cauldron of porridge? She wants me to go to Scotland. She says that the fey wife in the village has always delivered the Murray heirs.’

‘You surely don’t intend to go?’

Lizzie’s shrug was exactly like her brother’s. ‘Alex would never say so, but I know it’s what he’d prefer. I’m already beginning to show, too. I have no wish to parade about the town with a swollen belly and I’ve certainly no desire at all to have myself laced into corsets to cover it up, so maybe it’s for the best. It’s not really a ruin, Alex’s castle. Besides, you can’t blame him, wanting the bairn to be born in his homeland.’

‘Bairn!’

Lizzie laughed. ‘Give me a few months up there and I’ll be speaking like a native.’ She picked up her gloves and began to draw them on. ‘I must go, I promised Alex I wouldn’t leave him with his mother for too long.’ She stood on tiptoe to kiss Elliot’s cheek. ‘You do look tired. What have you been up to, I wonder? I know you’ve not been gallivanting, for I’ve lost count of the number of young ladies who’ve enquired after my handsome, charming, eligible and most elusive brother. And don’t tell me it’s because you lack invitations, because I know that’s nonsense. What you need is …’

‘Lizzie, for the last time, I don’t want a wife.’

‘I was about to say that what you need is gainful employment,’ his sister said, in an offended tone. ‘The Marchmont estates aren’t enough to keep you occupied, they never were. You need an outlet for all that energy of yours now that you don’t have your battalions to order around; you need something to stop you from brooding on incompetence and injustice. I’m not underestimating what you’ve been through, but it’s past, Elliot, and you can’t undo it. It’s time to move on, put your experience to some use rather than use it to beat yourself up. There, that is frank talking indeed, but if I am to go to Scotland with a clear conscience, I don’t have time to tread lightly.’

‘Not that you ever do.’

Lizzie chuckled. ‘Any more than you do. You don’t lack opinions and certainly don’t lack a cause. Why don’t you go into politics yourself?’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know why you look so surprised,’ Lizzie said drily. ‘What is the point in you berating the likes of Wellington and all the rest.’

‘I hadn’t thought.’

‘Then think. And when you’ve concluded that I’m right, think about taking a wife, too.’ She tapped his cheek lightly. ‘A woman with a bit of gumption, who can force her way past that barricade of charm you arm yourself with. You see how well I know you, brother dear? You don’t let people in very easily, do you? I expect the army is responsible for that stiff upper lip and all that—it makes sense in war, but we’re at peace now, thank the Lord.’ Lizzie nodded decisively. ‘Yes. What you need is a woman of character, someone who can stand up to you, not some malleable little thing who would bore you to death before the wedding trip was over, no matter how pretty she was. I shall have to redouble my efforts before I go north, but I am quite set on it, so don’t despair,’ she said with a bright smile.

‘I shall try my very best not to,’ Elliot replied, as he opened the door for her.

‘I wish you would be serious. I know I’ve spoken out of turn, but you’re clearly not happy. I will fret about you down here all alone when I am up in Scotland.’

‘You’ve got more than enough to worry about. I’m not unhappy, just not quite sure what to do with myself now that I don’t have the army. I feel as if I’ve lost my purpose.’

‘Politics will give you that. Will you at least think about what I said?’

‘We’ll see. Did you come in your carriage?’

Lizzie nodded, deciding against pushing him any further. She was on the step outside when she remembered the package. ‘My book!’ she declared.

Elliot retrieved the brown-paper parcel from the marble table which sat under the hall mirror. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. It’s just a novel. Give me it.’

Intrigued by her cagey look, Elliot held on to the parcel. ‘What kind of a novel?’

‘I’m not … it’s just that—well, Alex doesn’t approve.’

‘Good Lord, Lizzie, don’t tell me you’ve been browsing in one of those bookseller’s back rooms in Covent Garden.’

He meant it as a joke, but, to Elliot’s astonishment, Lizzie’s face crimsoned. ‘And what if I did? Oh, don’t look so shocked, it’s not that kind of book. It’s a novel. The latest Bella Donna novel, if you must know.’ Seeing her brother’s blank look, she sighed. ‘The whole ton is agog at her exploits, I can’t believe you’ve not heard of her. Bella Donna is the most shocking literary creation, she’s a sort of voluptuous sorceress. The stories are quite Gothic, extremely racy and wholly entertaining. I personally see no reason why they should be kept under the counter, nor why I, a married woman, should not read them,’ she said darkly. ‘If Bella Donna were a man—well, it would be a different story, if you’ll forgive the pun. It is the fact that she is a woman who treats—intimacy—exactly like a man that is so shocking. She is quite ruthless, you know, incredibly powerful. I think it would amuse you, I shall send it round once I am done with it if you like.’

‘Why not,’ Elliot said, surrendering the package, ‘it sounds amusing.’

Lizzie chuckled. ‘Yes, and now I can tell Alex that you lent it to me if he discovers it. I really must go. You’ll come to dinner then, tomorrow? Oh, did I forget to ask you? Never mind, I won’t take no for an answer,’ she said, turning her back and tripping lightly down the steps to her waiting carriage. ‘I promised Alex I’d persuade you to join us. Lord Armstrong will be there—the diplomat. You can talk politics with him.’

Wriggling her fingers at him over her shoulder, Lizzie climbed into her barouche without looking back or giving Elliot a chance to refuse her invitation.

He returned to the parlour, deep in thought. Incorrigible as she was, his sister was all too often right. He could not continue in this mode for much longer. Housebreaking, even if it was for a cause, was hardly a lifelong occupation. And he did need an occupation, though he had always known, as Lizzie herself said, that he was not cut out to play the country gentleman. Perhaps politics was the answer? It was certainly worth considering. Lizzie’s ideas usually were. She did not know him as well as she thought, but she knew him better than anyone else.

And a wife—was she right about that, too? Picking up the Morning Post, which his man had left, carefully ironed, on his desk, Elliot pondered this question half-heartedly. He hadn’t ever seriously considered a wife. As a soldier with an increasingly dangerous sideline in espionage, it would have been irresponsible to marry. Not that that was the reason he hadn’t. Such a precarious and transient life hardly lent itself to fidelity, but Lizzie was right, curse her, that was just an excuse. The fact was, he didn’t let people in, he was wary of allowing anyone to see past whatever form of veneer he showed them. War made you like that. War taught you how fragile life was. It taught you how easy it was to be crushed by that fragility, too—he’d seen it too many times, written too many letters to grieving widows, listened to the last heartbreaking words of too many of their husbands. Pain like that, he could do without. It could not possibly be worth it.

He sighed. Blast Lizzie for putting such thoughts in his head. If she only knew that he’d been living like a monk since returning to England. What’s more, until he’d met Deborah Napier, he had been relatively content to do so. Last night had been so—so bloody amazing! Just thinking about it—oh God, just thinking about it. If only he had not dropped the painting. If only he had not allowed Deborah to go in search of a candle, she would not have found her inhibitions.

‘Dammit, what is wrong with me,’ Elliot exclaimed, ‘England must be full of attractive, available, experienced women looking for nothing more than a little light flirtation and a few indulgent hours in bed.’ Except that wasn’t what he wanted, not any more. He wanted Deborah. He didn’t just want to bed her either, he wanted to understand her. He wanted to know what went on in her head and what had gone on in her past. He wanted to know why it took breaking and entering to release her passion. And he wanted her to release it again.

What was it Lizzie said he needed? A woman with a bit of gumption, who can force her way past that barricade of charm you arm yourself with. A woman of character. Deborah was certainly that. Lizzie would definitely approve. Not that he was in any way seeking her approval. Politics, perhaps he would consider. Marriage—no. But the train of his thoughts disturbed him. Elliot shook out the newspaper, seeking distraction. He found it in the middle pages.

Last night, the Notorious Housebreaker commonly known as the Peacock struck again, this time at the abode of a most Distinguished Member of Parliament who resides in Grosvenor Square. The Villainous Thief has stolen a most valuable painting, the subject of which being a Very Important Personage. Said painting, executed by a Spanish Master, was torn asunder from its frame in the Most Honourable Gentleman’s Study. Once again, the Peacock had the effrontery to leave his Calling Card behind, along with the Rope by which he made his escape. Any Member of the Public who saw anything or anyone suspicious is urged to contact the Magistrates at Bow Street.

The portrait of the Very Important Person was currently wrapped in oilskin and safely tucked under the floorboards in Elliot’s bedchamber. A certain Spanish official, when approached by way of the intricate web of contacts which Elliot had been careful to maintain from his days in the covert service of the British Government, would most certainly pay a substantial sum for it. Tomorrow, he would set about making the first of those contacts. Today though, he had another alluring, beguiling and altogether intriguing contact to see.

Folding the newspaper into a neat square which would fit into his coat pocket, Elliot loped up the stairs three at a time, calling for his man to fetch his hat and gloves and his groom to have his curricle brought round.

Looking over from her writing desk at the clock, Deborah was astonished to discover that it was well past two. The stack of paper before her bore testament to her labours, the neat lines gradually deteriorating to an unruly scrawl as her pen struggled to keep up with her fevered imagination. She had forgotten what it was like, to be so inspired. It made her realise how much of a chore her books had become. The wisps of this story clung to her like plucking fingers, willing her to pick up her pen once more lest she lose the thread, but she knew that she had reached her limit for today.

Her wrist ached. Her head felt as if it were stuffed with cork. Wiping her ink-stained hands on the equally ink-stained linen smock she wore to protect her gown, Deborah thrust the manuscript into the desk and closed the lid.

Returning from the kitchen, where she had made herself a much-needed pot of tea, she froze on the threshold of the parlour.

Elliot was immaculately turned out, not a crease in his olive-green coat of superfine nor his biscuit-coloured pantaloons. The gloss on his tasselled Hessians showed not a speck of dirt. In contrast, Deborah was horribly conscious of her hair pinned up anyhow under its cap, her work smock, her grubby fingers. Why did he always have to see her looking at her worst? And why did he always have to be so much more attractive, every time she saw him? Taller. More muscular—those pantaloons fitted like a second skin. More everything! And why did he have to smile like that? And why, when she was quite resolved to forget all about him, was she so absurdly pleased to see him?

She clutched the tea tray to her chest. ‘How on earth did you get in?’ The shock of seeing him, as if he had just walked out of Bella’s story, combined with the traitorous shiver of simple pleasure which had been her first reaction, made her sound aggressive, but better that, than let him see the effect he had on her.

‘It would be a poor Peacock indeed who could not break into a house with such flimsy defences,’ Elliot said with a grin, relieving her of the tea tray and giving her no option but to follow him into her own parlour.

‘I did not think to see you again.’ Deborah sat down on the edge of a chair by the fire. She longed to pour her tea, but was afraid her hands would shake.

Elliot raised a brow. ‘Surely you must have known I would call?’

‘We said goodbye last night.’

‘You said goodbye.’

Deborah gazed at him helplessly. He waited for her to say something, but she began measuring leaves from the little wooden caddy. Water splashed as she poured it from the kettle into the pewter teapot. ‘I brought only one cup.’

‘I hate tea,’ Elliot said, sitting himself opposite her.

She poured her drink, took a sip and then a deep breath. ‘Why are you here?’

Her antagonism didn’t fool him. She was as nervous as a cat, but she hadn’t been able wholly to disguise the fact that she was pleased to see him. Elliot handed her the newspaper. ‘I thought you might like to see this.’

Deborah scanned the report, her face lightening to a shadow of a smile as she read. ‘I woke this morning persuaded that I had imagined the whole episode. I can’t quite believe it happened even now, despite seeing it reported in print.’

‘Fortunately, there is no indication that anyone knows I had an accomplice, but all the same, you must have a care not to let slip, even inadvertently, anything which might betray you.’

‘I won’t,’ Deborah said, thinking guiltily of the account she had written just this morning of the episode, reassuring herself at the same time that she had changed sufficient details for it not to matter. ‘There is nothing to fear, I am sure. You did not strike me as a worrier, Elliot.’

‘I am not worried for myself, but for you. I care little for my own safety, but I would rather not have yours on my conscience.’

‘You don’t. It was I who persuaded you, if you recall.’

‘I would never have allowed myself to be persuaded if I had not wanted you with me,’ Elliot said with a wry smile. ‘How does it feel, to be so vicariously notorious?’

‘Vicarious,’ Deborah replied pithily. ‘I feel as if it was someone else who clambered down that rope. Though I must confess, my conscience has been bothering me rather belatedly. That painting was very valuable.’

‘And you’re worried about what I’m going to do with the ill-gotten gains,’ Elliot said. ‘No, don’t look like that, I can’t blame you. I’m surprised you haven’t asked before.’

‘I am ashamed to admit that I most likely did not because I didn’t want a reason not to go,’ Deborah confessed. She put down her half-drunk cup of tea. ‘Why do you do it, Elliot? I mean, I can understand, that it’s partly what I wanted—the sheer thrill of it. I can understand, too, that you find civilian life rather boring compared to what you’re used to, but—to say that you care little for your own life as you just did—I can’t believe that you are hoping to be caught.’

‘Of course not. I am bored though, that is a part of it. My sister thinks I need gainful employment and she’s probably right,’ Elliot said, grimacing.

‘Gainful doesn’t sound very like you. I didn’t know you had a sister. Is she in town?’

‘For the moment. Lizzie is married to a dour Scot, who has plans to whisk her away to the Highlands for the birth of their first child.’ Elliot grinned, happy to be sidetracked. ‘I foresee some epic battles between her and her mother-in-law and I know who I’d put my money on. Lizzie is short of neither opinions nor the will to enforce them.’

‘I’d have liked to have a sister,’ Deborah said with a wistful smile. ‘I don’t have any family. My parents died when I was very young and my uncle, who became my guardian, was a bachelor, very set in his ways. When I came back to live with him after finishing school, he didn’t know what to do with me. He didn’t like Jeremy, he told me that he was only marrying me for my inheritance, but he didn’t make much of an attempt to stop me either. “You must make your own bed, and don’t come running to me if you don’t like lying in it,” he said. Not that I would have,’ she concluded, with a twisted little smile.

Did she know how much she had given away with that last little sentence? Elliot wondered, touched by her pride, angry on her behalf at the need for it. ‘Is he still alive?’

Deborah shook her head. ‘He died five years ago. I rarely saw him once I was married. I often wish I had made more of an effort.’ It was surprising how guilty she felt even now, and no amount of telling herself that Uncle Peter had made no effort to keep in touch either made any difference. She had been afraid to let him see her and had kept him at a distance as she kept everyone else. ‘I don’t know how we came on to this subject,’ she said brusquely, ‘you cannot possibly be interested in my rather pathetic life.’

‘I’m interested in you, Deborah.’

She concentrated on tucking a stray lock of hair back behind her ear, dipping her head to cover the faint traces of colour in her cheeks. ‘I can think of any number of topics more interesting.’

Elliot was much inclined to pursue the subject, but his instincts warned him it would be unwise. Teasing out secrets was second nature to him. Knowing when to stop lest he betray just how much he had garnered was a subtle art, but one which he knew he had mastered. Though it had to be said, he admitted wryly to himself, that Deborah was proving to be more of a challenge than any close-mouthed diplomat. ‘Why did I invent the Peacock, then? Does that constitute a more interesting topic?’

Deborah nodded. ‘Provided it does not also constitute an intrusion. I would like to know, for you puzzle me. Your victims are selected too carefully for them to be random. Do you have some sort of personal grudge against them?’

‘What makes you say that?’ Elliot asked sharply.

‘I don’t know.’ Deborah frowned. ‘I suppose I cannot believe you do it for personal gain and there are too many robberies for it to be simply the thrill of it which drives you. You’d have become bored by now if that was it.’

‘You are very perceptive. It is to be hoped that none of the gentlemen at Bow Street has your wit.’

‘None of the gentlemen at Bow Street has my inside information. Is it too personal? I will understand if you don’t wish to say any more.’

Elliot drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. His instincts were to confide in her, though common sense told him that by doing so he was taking an unwarrantable risk. Not of deliberate exposure, she would not do that, but an inadvertent comment, a remark let slip in the wrong company—how could he be sure she would not do that?

He just knew. She was as close as a clam and, of her own admission, she lived like a hermit. Besides, he wanted to tell her. He wanted her to know. ‘You were right about my victims,’ he said. ‘They are very carefully selected. All of them were at some point responsible for the supply chain—or lack of it—to the army. Medical supplies, orderlies and doctors, boots, basic rations, horses. Most of all horses. They kept us short of all of those things, because after all, what does an army need to fight except guns? Even if you can’t get the guns to the battlefield. Even if you can’t get the men wounded by those guns misfiring back to a field hospital. What do they care? They don’t,’ he said flatly. ‘I know they don’t because all my letters and protests and reports fell on deaf ears at the time, and now—well, now it is done and everyone wants to forget all about it, so there is even less point in letters and reports and protests.’

‘So you take what will hurt them instead.’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what I do.’

‘Did you lose many men because of such shortages?’

‘Yes.’

‘Friends, too? Forgive me, but it seems to me such a very personal thing you are doing, there must have been someone …’

‘There was. My best friend.’ Elliot gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles showed white.

‘Henry,’ Deborah said gently. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Elliot nodded curtly.

‘I truly am sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you; you don’t need to say any more.’

‘I want to,’ Elliot said, surprising both of them. ‘I want to tell you.’ He swallowed repeatedly, cleared his throat. ‘We joined up together, Henry and I, I told you that already. We worked our way through the ranks together, though he was much too ill-disciplined to keep his stripes for long. He made it to captain once, but it only lasted about six months. He was a first-class soldier. We always looked out for each other. When I needed an extra pair of hands, I always turned to Henry. He was quick with his fists, but he knew the importance of keeping other things close, which was important in my—my alternative line of business.’

He paused. Across from him, Deborah was gazing at him intently. Would she be shocked? He doubted it, somehow. More likely excited, as she was by the Peacock. That decided him. ‘The thing is, I wasn’t just a fighting man. There’s a reason why the Peacock is so able.’ He grinned. ‘Actually, it’s ironic that the very skills I learned in order to steal secrets are the same ones I use to steal their property now. Most of which, I hasten to add, was stolen in the first place.’

Deborah stared at him in utter astonishment. ‘You mean—what you’re saying is that you—you stole? At our Government’s behest? But why? What did you—oh! My God, you were a spy?’

He should have known how she would react. Her eyes were sparkling. Elliot laughed. ‘Yes, I was.’

‘Good grief! No wonder civilian life bores you. You must tell me—I wish you will tell me—I don’t know—anything, all of it—no, I don’t expect you can tell me all of it. Goodness, what secrets you must know.’ Deborah chuckled. ‘How horrified the likes of Jacob would be if they knew. You are quite right, Elliot, it is irony past price. Can you tell me more? Were you a master of subterfuge?’

Danger, even if it was vicarious, certainly brought her to life. ‘I’m afraid it was rather more mundane than that. If anything, I was a master of patience.’ He told her a few choice stories because he liked to see her laugh, because he found her laughter infectious, and he told her a few more because returning to the subject in hand was too painful, but he underestimated her.

‘He must have been more like a brother than a friend. Henry, I mean,’ Deborah said suddenly, interrupting him in the middle of a story. ‘What happened?’

‘He was wounded in the Pyrenees during the siege on San Sebastian. He took a bullet in the leg, above the knee. It smashed the bone—he’d have lost his leg, but it shouldn’t have been fatal. Only they couldn’t reach him because there were no carts and no mules.’

‘Oh God.’ Deborah covered her mouth, her eyes wide with horror.

Elliot’s knuckles were white. ‘For more than a week, he lay in agony in the blistering sun with his wound festering. He died of a fever a few days after they finally got him to the field hospital. I was with him, at the end, though he hardly recognised me. He died for want of a mule. A mule!’ He thumped his fist down hard on the chair. ‘But what do those bastards in the War Office with their lists and their budgets know of that? What does it matter, when a man with one leg would have been no bloody use to them anyway? What do they know of the suffering, the agonies that Henry and thousands like him went through, and what do they care now for the survivors?’

‘But you care,’ Deborah said, shaken by the cold rage. ‘You care enough to steal from them, to make reparations for them, is that it?’

‘The money goes to a charity which helps the survivors.’ Now that he had opened the floodgates his bitter anger, so long pent-up, demanded expression. ‘Someone has to help them,’ Elliot said furiously. ‘While they fought for their country, their country learned how to do very well without them. Now that the Government no longer needs them to surrender their lives, their limbs and their hearts on the battlefield, it has decided it has no need to reward them with employment, back pay, pensions. It is not just the men, it is their widows and children who suffer.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ Deborah said falteringly.

‘Few people do. All they see is a beggar. Just another beggar. Proud men, reduced to holding out a cup for alms! Can you imagine what that does to them? No wonder so many cannot face their families. And they are portrayed as deserters, drunkards, criminals.’

The scar which bisected his eyebrow stood out white against his tan. The other one, which followed the hairline of his forehead, seemed to pulse. How many other, invisible scars did he bear? His suffering made hers seem so trite in comparison. The grooves at the side of his mouth were etched deep. His eyes were fierce, hard. Deborah trembled at the sorrow and pain they hid, such depths, which made shallows of her own suffering. ‘I just didn’t know,’ she said simply. ‘I am quite ashamed.’ The truth was so awful, it made her conscience seem like a paltry consideration. ‘I wish now that we had taken more from that house in Grosvenor Square.’

Her vehemence drew a bark of laughter from Elliot. ‘Believe me, over the last two years, the Peacock has taken a great deal more.’

‘So it is a war of attrition that the Peacock is waging, is that it? And of vengeance?’

Deborah’s perception made Elliot deeply uncomfortable. He was not accustomed to thinking about his motivations, never mind discussing them. ‘What do you know of vengeance?’ he asked roughly.

Enough to recognise it. Deborah hesitated, surprised at the strength of her urge to confide, but the very idea of comparing their causes appalled her. Besides, his voice held an undertone of aggression that warned her to tread lightly. He obviously thought he had said too much already. She could easily empathise with that. ‘The painting that we stole,’ she said, seeking to lighten the subject, ‘you knew about it because of your spying, didn’t you?’

‘You’ve no idea how much ransacking and looting goes on in the higher echelons in wartime. That painting was a bribe.’

To Deborah’s relief, some of the grimness left his mouth. She asked him to explain; when he did, she encouraged him to tell her of other bribes, relieved to see the grooves around his mouth relaxing, the sadness leaving his eyes. The battered armchair in which he sat, she had rescued from a lumber room at Kinsail Manor. His legs, in their tight-knit pantaloons, stretched out in front of him. If she reached, she could touch her toe to his Hessian boots.

‘I’ve said too much,’ Elliot said, interrupting himself in the middle of a story, realising abruptly how much he had revealed, how little he had talked to anyone of his old life before. It had been too easy to talk to Deborah. He wasn’t sure what he thought of that, accustomed as he was to keep his own counsel. His instincts were to retreat. ‘I must go,’ he said, getting to his feet.

How did he close his expression off like that? Ignoring the flicker of disappointment, Deborah rose, too. ‘You have certainly said enough to make me realise how shockingly ignorant I am. I shall not look on those poor souls with their begging bowls in the same way again.’

Outside, it was grown dark. Elliot lit a spill from the fire and began to light the candles on the mantel. ‘I’d like to call on you again,’ he said.

Deborah bit her lip. It would have been so much easier, had he not chosen to confide in her, if he had not given her so many reasons to wish to know more about him. To like him. In another world, in another life, Elliot was the kind of man she would have …

But there was absolutely no point whatsoever in thinking like that. Slowly, she shook her head. The pang of loss was physical, a pain in her stomach. ‘I live a very secluded life.’

‘I’m not suggesting we attend Almack’s together. We could go for a drive.’

Why did he have to make it so difficult? ‘I can’t, Elliot. I am perfectly content with my own company.’

‘So content that you need to break into houses and climb down ropes to make you feel alive?’

Deborah flinched. ‘I thought you understood. That was an escape from reality, merely.’

‘I don’t understand you.’ Elliot cast the spill into the fire. ‘One minute, you are hanging on my every word, the next, you imply that you never want to see me again.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think that you would expect—I never considered us continuing our acquaintance after last night. I should not have encouraged you to confide in me, but I was so caught up in what you said and—I should not have,’ Deborah said wretchedly. ‘I’m sorry, Elliot.’

‘And what about last night? You are sorry about that, too, I suppose? Dammit, I was not imagining it, the strength of attraction between us. Why are you hell bent on ignoring it?’ Frustrated and confused, Elliot pulled her roughly towards him. ‘You can’t deny it! I can feel your heart beating. I can see it in your eyes that you want to kiss me just as much as I want to kiss you.’

‘No. Elliot, please …’

He was so sure, so certain that if he could just kiss her, it would rekindle the flame that had flared between them last night, but he had never in his life used persuasion on a woman in that way, and would not do so now. Elliot threw himself away from her. ‘I apologise,’ he said curtly. ‘I have obviously completely misjudged the situation.’

‘No,’ Deborah whispered, ‘it is I who did so. Last night, I gave you to think that I would—when I could not. Cannot. You have nothing to apologise for.’

It went against the grain to leave her like this but she left him no option. ‘Your servant, Lady Kinsail.’ Elliot sketched a bow.

‘Goodbye, Elliot.’ He was gone before she had finished saying the words, the front door slamming behind him. Deborah could not resist peering out into the gloom through the window, but he did not look back.

Alone in the parlour, she squared her shoulders. It had cost her dear, not to kiss him. It had cost her even dearer, that look on his face when she behaved so contrarily, but it was for the best. Elliot was not Jeremy, but it made no difference. Never, with Jeremy, had she come close to feeling what Elliot made her feel, but that just made things worse. She did not want to feel anything.

‘It’s over,’ she said to herself, pulling the curtains across the window. It would have been easier, knowing Elliot less, but it was too late for that now. Knowing him better simply made her more certain she was right. But staring into the flames of the fire, Deborah couldn’t help wishing that things were different.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.