Dangerous Lover, page 24
Griz shook her head. “No.” She frowned. “Well, I suppose I felt a bit dizzy yesterday afternoon, but I was tired after being awake most of the night in Ricco’s house. Oh, that reminds, me, Alex—”
“Griz, are you expecting a baby?”
Grizelda’s jaw dropped. “Expecting a…” She stared at Alexandra. “Dear God, I hope not. Do I? Oh, God, Alex, what if I am?”
“Don’t you want a child?” Alexandra asked gently.
Grizelda’s eyes filled with unshed tears. “Oh, I do,” she whispered. “I do. But not…not yet! How am I to have fun with Dragan when I have a baby?”
Alexandra refrained from pointing out that it was fun with Dragan that had got her to this place and then realized she hadn’t meant that kind of fun. “You mean, climbing walls and chasing people across the city, hitting them with bags? That kind of thing?”
A smile flickered across Grizelda’s face. “Yes, that kind of thing.”
“I can’t imagine even a whole gaggle of children slowing you two down for long. You will find a way, Griz. You always do.”
“I do, don’t I?” she said, thoughtfully. Her arm closed protectively across her belly, an expression of wonder suffusing her face. “Oh, my… this is huge, Alex.”
“Huge, amazing, and wonderful. I am so glad for you.”
“I shall be a terrible mother.”
“You will be a delightful mother, caring and fun.”
Griz dashed a hand across her eyes and laughed. “And what of you, Alexandra? I saw you vanish with Sir Nicholas. Have you reached an understanding?”
“I believe we have,” Alexandra admitted, blushing, and Griz gave her a rare hug, which she returned.
They sat back quietly for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts until quick footsteps on the stone stairs behind made Alexandra turn.
It was Dragan. “What are you two plotting out here alone?”
Griz jumped to her feet. “I’ll tell you if you dance with me.”
“I’m happy to oblige,” Dragan said promptly. “Miss Battle, will you accompany us?”
Smiling, she shook her head. “No, I shall sit here a moment longer.”
They were, she thought, as they walked away hand-in-hand, very sweet. Ill-matched by conventional standards, perfectly so by their own. And hers. They were devoted to each other, and she looked forward to seeing them as parents.
And now it was possible she, too, would be a mother one day.
“Tell you what,” a familiar voice said, as its owner eased himself onto the bench beside her, “You should be able to do better than making friends with courtesans.”
She stared at her father in astonishment.
Chapter Twenty-Three
During his dance with his sister-in-law, Nicholas had exerted himself to be charming and put her at her ease. Now that she was no longer defensive of her children’s home, she seemed to realize all the awkwardness of keeping it and making him, its owner, her guest. However, he paid her many compliments, and by the end of the dance, she seemed more at ease. When, in truth, more than half his mind and heart were not on her at all but were dwelling still on those moments with Alexandra.
His promised bride. His wife. The contentment of family life had never called to him before. In fact, to him it had seemed a contradiction of terms. Now, with Alexandra, he longed for it. As for the intimacies of marriage…he doubted he could wait. Fierce desire for her wracked him still, even dancing with another woman.
So all in all, he was relieved when the dance came to an end, and he could bow to his sister-in-law and move away in search of her once more…
“Sir.” A footman waylaid him. “A Mr. Harris has asked to see you. He is in the front reception room, if you wish, or we can deny—”
“No, I’ll see him. Thank you.” Nicholas strode out of the ballroom, eager for good news. He didn’t want to spoil Alexandra’s happiness with this mess. Not tonight. Tomorrow was time enough.
He found Harris pacing the floor of the reception room with a face like thunder.
He closed the door. “Good news?” he asked hopefully.
“Not exactly,” Harris snapped. “He didn’t go into your house as we expected. We followed him here to Brook Street.”
“Here?” Nicholas stared. “Where is he, in God’s name?”
“In the garden at the back. My men are surrounding the place.”
“Why don’t you just seize him?” Nicholas demanded.
“Because he’s here to speak to his daughter, and we’re quite keen to hear that conversation.”
Anger surged through Nicholas. His hands clenched, and he took an involuntary stride closer to Harris. “She has nothing to do with his crimes.”
“Then she won’t mind handing him over,” Harris said, quite unintimidated.
“For God’s sake, Harris, he’s her father! Would you hand yours over to prison?”
“My father hasn’t kidnapped children or extorted ransom for them. I’m telling you this as a courtesy, sir, but if you interfere, I will arrest you.”
“Then arrest me,” he flung over his shoulder. “For I won’t let him go near her.”
He was already out the door before he finished speaking, marching back to the ballroom.
His impatient gaze could not find her among the bright throng, though eventually, he located Lady Griz and Tizsa entering from the terrace door. He pushed his way toward them, forcing himself to smile and nod to acquaintances and excuse himself civilly to those he disturbed.
At one point, Caroline Jenner stood in front of him, smiling. “Nicholas, there you are. You have not yet asked me to dance.”
“That is true, and I shall be happy to rectify the matter in just a little. Excuse me…” He caught her frown, the spit of temper from her eyes, but he didn’t care.
At last, he reached the Tizsas, who, for some reason, looked dazed in a happy kind of a way. Perhaps they had enjoyed a moment in the garden.
“Where is Alexandra?” he asked without preamble. “Have you seen her?”
“She’s still in the garden,” Griz said in surprise. “Just below the terrace. Sir—”
“Ricco is here,” he interrupted, making grimly for the terrace door.
Behind him, Tizsa spoke with uncharacteristic severity. “Stay here, Griz. I mean it.”
*
“Courtesans?” Alexandra repeated, outraged on behalf of her friend, the duke’s daughter. “She is not a courtesan!”
“That’s a polite word considering, but there, we won’t quarrel over it.”
“Papa, what the devil are you doing here?” She peered at him to make sure, for he sat in the shadows, but he was not wearing evening dress.
“I came to see you,” he said easily. “We didn’t get the chance to say goodbye before. And well, the thing is, turns out I need money after all.”
“I told you the last time, I don’t have any money,” she said impatiently.
“Well, you looked mighty cozy with a man who does—he whom you call your employer.”
Stung by his contemptuous tone, she snapped, “He is no longer my employer but my affianced husband.”
Her father rubbed his hands together. “Even better. Get me a hundred, there’s a good girl. You can send more later.”
“Send it where?” she asked, bewildered. “Where are you going?”
He sighed. “Something came up. Well, something went wrong. I waited too long, and it all blew up in my face. Always quit while you’re ahead, in life as in gaming.”
She frowned at him, wondering yet again how this had happened to such a once-great musician. “Papa, when did you last play the piano? You can always make money that way. Quick money if you need it.”
He put his hands behind his back, like a child hiding illicit sweetmeats. “Thing is, the old fingers don’t work so well anymore.”
“Perhaps they would if you eschewed the brandy.”
“I did. But the wine isn’t good for them either. No games, now, Lexie, and no scolds. Just get me the money.”
“Don’t be silly, Papa, even if I was prepared to ask him, which I’m not, he would have no reason to carry money to a ball.”
“I’ll wait until tonight. You can throw it over the garden wall if we time it right to avoid the policemen swarming all over the place.”
“Police?” she said, startled. “Why are police swarming around Hungerford House?”
And like a sledgehammer pounding her head, she knew.
His comments about courtesans meant he had seen Griz dressed like Nell and her comrades the night they had chased the cloaked man and his underlings and rescued the kidnapped boys. He had been in London for months but only come to her when he was afraid to go home or to his usual haunts after the kidnappers were arrested. He had told her he had money when he stayed in her room. But since then, Griz and Dragan had found his hidden ransom money.
“Ricco,” she whispered. “You are Ricco.” She leapt to her feet, backing away from him in horror. “Papa, how could you? How could you take children—”
“I never hurt them,” he said defensively. “Paid a fortune if you must know, just to have them looked after and kept happy.”
“But you abducted them! You took them away from their homes, their parents! Do you have any idea of the damage that could do?”
“Oh, grow up, Alexandra, they were all pampered little—” He broke off, his gaze darting, and rose slowly to his feet.
No wonder. Dark figures were swarming across the garden from the back wall and from either side.
“Get me out of this, Lexie,” her father said urgently. “Take me through the house to the front. There must be fewer Peelers there.”
And she saw suddenly that this was her fault. If she had left him to be punished in Italy, surely, he would not have gone on getting worse, overstepping more and more boundaries until he was kidnapping children.
“Not this time, Papa,” she said hoarsely. “Not for this.”
Even in the gloom, she saw the anger and betrayal in his eyes. She had always been there, even as a child, to get him out of trouble. To help him find his way home when he was drunk, to hide from importuning women, to plead his ill-health to theatre managers when he was too drunk to play or had found a congenial gambling den instead. She had helped make him this.
“No matter,” he said savagely. “I’ll go myself.”
He swung around toward the terrace and, like Alexandra, must have seen Nicholas and Dragan running purposefully down the steps. Shame and despair flooded her. He had ruined her life. Again.
He changed direction, bolting toward the little herb garden that led to the kitchen door. At once, Dragan ran to head him off, and in any case, policemen fanned out to block him.
A huge, ominous cloud descended on Alexandra, like a prophecy of imminent tragedy. Instinctively, she threw herself toward Nicholas, and indeed, his path blocked by Dragan and several policemen, her father doubled back toward the terrace steps with startling speed. And now, something in his hand glittered in the moonlight. A dagger? Certainly a blade of some kind. And Nicholas was striding purposefully to meet him.
Nicholas must have seen the blade, for his posture altered, ready to meet the threat. But Alexandra could not allow that. That he should face such a danger from her father.
“No!” she shouted and threw herself between them, her arms spread out. Nicholas bumped into her back. With sudden horror on his face, her father tried to slow his charge, to swerve. He even flung his hand up in the air to avoid hurting her. But he didn’t drop the blade.
Nicholas’s arm snaked around her waist, spinning her into the rough, terrace wall, which she grasped, gasping. Before her eyes, Nicholas and her father were grappling. Nicholas had seized the wrist that held the knife, but her father’s free hand was at Nicholas’s throat.
With a sob, she pushed off the wall, meaning to hurl herself into the fray once more. But it was too late.
The knife had already fallen to the ground. Nicholas’s swift chop to her father’s arm broke the hold on his throat, and faster than she could easily see, Nicholas had seized him, wrenching his arm up his back in a secure grip. Dragan was there, policemen were there, including Inspector Harris.
“Take him away,” Harris ordered. “Quietly, by the back gate.”
“Wait,” her father said hoarsely, and for some reason, they did. Two burly policemen still held him captive, but the others stepped aside, clearing a path between him and Alexandra.
Their eyes met.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” she whispered. “It was too much. Finally, it was too much.”
He swallowed. Perhaps he was thinking of what might have been. Or what would be. “Will you come and see me? If I don’t hang?”
Tears coursed down her cheeks. “Of course I will.”
A ghost of the old devil-may-care smile curved his lips. “Then take me away, gentlemen. I don’t believe I like this party.”
“Only because you ruined it, you…you…” The tears came faster, but astonishingly a strong arm came around her shoulders, and she was held against a broad, hard chest.
Nicholas held her while she wept.
*
Mingled with the grief and shame and guilt surrounding her father was wonder that Nicholas still sat at her side. Mrs. Swan, told something of the arrest made in her back garden, had obligingly made a small parlor available to them, while she and Griz recovered.
Not that there appeared to be anything wrong with Griz now. Beneath her frown of worry over Alexandra, she was radiant, and, of course, she had not even been in the garden during the capture. But she had clearly decided Mrs. Swan’s kindness would be more easily elicited for her than for Nicholas’s upstart governess.
Alexandra’s tears had dried. She had almost stopped shaking. Dragan thrust a glass of brandy into her hand, and she drank gratefully.
“When did you know?” she asked him.
“This afternoon, when I showed James my drawing of Ricco.”
She closed her eyes. “Why didn’t you say something to me?” She knew the answer, of course. Because they didn’t know that she wasn’t helping her father.
“For one thing, Harris wanted to be sure neither you nor Sir Nicholas was involved. For another, Sir Nicholas wanted it all settled and Ricco arrested while you were out of the house.”
Sir Nicholas’s arm tightened. “I didn’t want you upset. It never entered my head that he would come here, even if he did spot the watching police at Hungerford.”
She opened her eyes and stared at him. “But you left Evelina alone at home, knowing he would come there to get to me?”
“Not alone, no,” Nicholas said. “Apart from the police outside the house, there should be one inside, along with James, one footman, and two brawny stable boys.”
She accepted that. “But how did he know I was here in Brook Street? Did he see us leave?”
“Perhaps,” Nicholas said, “Or he may have been speaking to the stable staff, who let drop the direction for the carriage this evening. They would not tell me that, but they did admit to seeing him in the mews.”
“My father is very plausible,” she said anxiously, in case he planned to turn off the too-talkative grooms.
“I might shout at them,” Nicholas said flippantly, “but I usually give a man two chances.”
What about governesses? Or brides? “I thought you would hate me,” she whispered.
“Oh, why?” Griz said, kneeling in front of her. “None of us can help our families. And yet blood is thicker than water. I once tried to protect my own father when I thought he might have murdered someone. He didn’t,” she added hastily.
“He was captured trying to avoid hurting me,” Alexandra said.
“In his own way, he looked after you,” Nicholas said. “It is just a way that should never have been. Do you hate me for being responsible for his arrest?”
She jerked to face him, staring. “Of course, I do not!” And then she saw what he meant. That her father’s behavior, her father’s crimes, made no difference to his feelings either. She became fascinated by the reflection of a candle flame in his dark, warm eyes. Eyes that often hid the deep kindness and compassion of the man.
“We’ll just go back to the ball,” Griz murmured, allowing her husband to help her to her feet.
The closing door echoed in the room. Nicholas’s arm lay warm at her waist, his shoulder almost touching her cheek. She took his other hand, large, capable, and just a little rough for a gentleman’s, and held it between both of her own in her lap.
“Tell me honestly,” she pleaded. “Do you still wish to marry me?”
For answer, he leaned over and kissed her, a tender yet thorough kiss.
“Even if the scandal of my father’s crimes breaks over our heads?”
“Especially then.”
Her fingers tightened on his. “Did you ever doubt me?”
“No.”
This time, she kissed him and laid her head on his shoulder. It was sweet and peaceful.
“Tell me,” he said at last. “Would you care to dance?”
And quite suddenly, that was exactly what she wanted to do. She smiled into his shoulder, then released his hand. They rose together and walked back to the ball.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A lamp burned low in Evelina’s bedroom, as it did every night. In its pale glow, she looked angelic and peaceful, her beauty and innocence so intense it made Nicholas’s heart ache.
“Sweet dreams, little one,” he murmured, touching only her hair so as not to wake her.
Unexpectedly, her eyes opened, and she smiled sleepily. “You’re both here.”
Beside him, Alexandra smiled back.
“We’ll both always be here,” Nicholas said. “Miss Battle is going to marry me.”
“I know that,” Evelina said scornfully and went back to sleep.
Clearly trying not to laugh, Alexandra rose and tiptoed from the room. Nicholas followed her.
“I think she knew before I did,” he said wryly.
“Certainly before I did.” Alexandra’s hand crept into his as they walked along the passage. He liked the feel of it there, warm, soft, loving. “You know that…that if we have—if I have children with you, it will never make any difference between them and Evelina. I will love her just as much.”
