When Alexander Lavoie had asked Baron Daventon to remove his hand from her left breast, Angelique had thought that the night couldn’t get much worse.
She had been so very, very wrong.
Because now Alexander Lavoie, with the help of his flinty-eyed, hatchet-faced driver, was arranging her insensible brother on the plush squabs of Lavoie’s carriage, judiciously avoiding the drool leaking from the corner of Gerald’s mouth, along with the mud and horse droppings smeared over the back of Gerald’s coat.
Though he did take a moment to spread a large piece of burlap over his carriage upholstery before he heaved her brother inside.
She wondered if she shouldn’t just take her winnings directly to the London docks and purchase a fare to the Americas. Or Africa. Or India. Or any place the very first ship was departing for tomorrow morning. The idea of simply leaving everything behind was wildly tempting. But she couldn’t walk out on responsibilities. She couldn’t leave the twins. And she couldn’t leave Gerald. When things got difficult, Angelique Archer did not run. Ever.
So instead, she just held the horses while Lavoie and his driver wrestled with their snoring, drooling burden. She rested her head against the solid bulk of the nearest animal’s neck. She’d sold her mare and the three geldings her family had kept as saddle horses as well as their carriage horses long ago. Breathing in the earthy, familiar equine scent, she was surprised how much she missed them. How much she longed for the simple, uncomplicated joy that could be found at a brisk gallop—
“They’ll not wander anywhere, milady.” The address jolted her out of her miserable musings. It was the driver, the one Lavoie had called Matthews, faintly out of breath from his exertions. “But I thank ye all the same.”
Angelique blinked. The kind, even tone of his voice was at odds with the harsh fierceness of his face. “Of course,” she mumbled, releasing the horse.
“Where to, milady?” he asked.
To the edge of the earth, she wanted to say. She wasn’t particularly picky about which edge, as long as it was a long drop down.
“Bedford Square.”
“Very good.” Matthews nodded and climbed up, taking a moment to stow the firearms still resting on the seat. A mean and miserable part of her, a part that she was afraid to examine too closely, wondered if she shouldn’t have just let him shoot her brother. A flesh wound, like he’d said, something that might make her brother understand the seriousness of his actions tonight. Something that might keep him from going any farther down the dark and destructive path he was on.
“My lady.” This time it was Lavoie who addressed her. He was standing at the door of his carriage. “Please allow me to assist you into the carriage. It’s a bit of a step.”
Angelique swallowed with some difficulty and nodded. She moved toward Lavoie and accepted the hand he offered. The urge to curl her fingers around his was instant. Beneath her palm, she could feel steady warmth and strength and she wanted that for herself, if only for a minute. Instead, she gathered her skirts and stepped up into the interior of the carriage, releasing Lavoie’s hand and taking a seat opposite her brother.
She was trying to imagine what she would do with Gerald once they got home. She’d put him in the hall to sleep off his stupor, she decided. It would be better anyway, to be lying on polished marble in the event he cast up his accounts. Last week, Gerald had ruined the only remaining rug in the study.
Angelique gathered whatever shreds of pride remained and prepared herself to offer some sort of thanks to Lavoie before he could close the carriage door. “Mr. Lavoie, I must apologize again and offer you my sincere thanks—”
She stopped abruptly as Lavoie ducked into the carriage and pulled the door closed behind him with a loud snap. He lowered himself to the seat beside her and banged the flat of his hand on the roof twice. The carriage lurched forward.
“What are you doing?” Angelique asked, shrinking away from the hard heat of him that was now pressed up against her. His thigh. His hip. His shoulder. She squirmed, intensely aware of every inch of his body against every inch of hers.
“I’m sitting in my carriage.” Lavoie turned away from her slightly and fumbled with the small window near his shoulder. The tiny sliver of space that she’d managed to put between them disappeared as his thigh pressed more firmly against her own.
She tried to move farther away, but short of crossing the interior and sitting on the slumped form of her brother sprawled opposite, there was nowhere she could go. “I can assure you, Mr. Lavoie, I can handle my brother. There is no need to accompany us.”
She felt rather than saw Lavoie flex his right hand. “Mmmm.”
“I don’t want to take you away from your business.”
He ignored her.
She tried one more time. “Mr. Lavoie, please, it is not necessary for you to—”
“Perhaps not. But I will accompany you all the same.” In the next second, a hinge squeaked and a welcome draught of cool night air washed through the inside of the carriage. “Better.” Lavoie drew a deep breath. “If I am to get foxed, I would prefer to do it on good whiskey than the fumes emanating from your brother’s person.” He stretched his booted feet out as far as they could go in the cramped space and nudged the toe of Gerald’s muddied boot with his own. Her brother snorted softly but didn’t move. “How long has he been like this?”
“Like what?” Angelique asked flatly. She knew exactly what he meant, but she didn’t want to talk about this. Certainly not with Alexander Lavoie.
Beside her, Lavoie shifted, and Angelique could feel him watching her. “My lady.” It was gentle and chiding, and Angelique’s teeth clenched. His pity was far worse than his high-handedness.
“My brother just doesn’t know his limits,” she forced out.
She heard Lavoie chuckle, though it was decidedly without humor. “You defend him.” There was no inflection in that statement, and Angelique couldn’t tell if it was said in accusation or admiration.
“He’s my brother.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “One doesn’t get to abandon them. Even when they make unwise decisions. But I don’t suppose you can understand that, can you?”
She felt him stiffen beside her before his body seemed to relax again. “You might be surprised.”
Angelique didn’t think that likely. “He’s young.”
“Yet there are men his age who—” Lavoie stopped. “He won’t live to be old if he drinks himself to death,” was all he murmured.
“Thank you, Doctor. I wasn’t aware.” Angelique looked sightlessly out the window.
“What is the money for?” Lavoie asked abruptly. “The money you won at my club tonight. And the nights previous.”
“What does it matter?” Angelique didn’t turn.
“It doesn’t. So long as your brother isn’t pouring it down his throat.”
Angelique spun back to Lavoie, not trusting herself to speak for a moment. “You think I’d give him money to do this?” she managed when she found her voice. “You think I find any of this funny? Less than awful?”
He considered her. “No.”
“Then why would you presume such a thing?” She was furious.
“I’m not presuming anything. I’m trying to understand. If you are in some sort of difficulty, my lady, please let me help you.”
There he went, offering help again. For a terrifying moment, Angelique nearly gave in to the impulse to tell this stranger everything. Tell him about the solicitors who came to their home with grave faces and dire warnings and no plausible explanations about what her father had been doing when he’d secretly started selling off the Hutton holdings, piece by piece, five years ago. Or where that fortune in cash might be now, and her inability to discover even the smallest clue. She could tell him about her brother’s disinclination to help, or even care, so long as his next pint was paid for and his next whore was willing.
But she wouldn’t.
No one knew. And she would keep it that way. The silver lining in all of this was that Gerald, while he might carelessly and irresponsibly spend what little he managed to cobble together, couldn’t lose the family fortune. Because it appeared it was already lost.
And as much as Alexander Lavoie might be sincere in his offer of assistance, there was nothing a gaming hell owner would ever be able to do. Lavoie couldn’t tell her where the family fortune might have gone. He could not tell her how to get it back. He couldn’t make her brother into someone he wasn’t.
Angelique could still feel his eyes on her in the darkened interior, pale washes of gaslight occasionally stabbing through the dark. “You can’t help me,” she told him.
“Mmmm.”
She wasn’t sure if he was agreeing or arguing.
Across the seat from them, her brother twitched and snorted loudly before falling back into his stupor.
Lavoie made a small noise in the back of his throat. “Perhaps then I might be able to help your brother in the event he finds himself in need of assistance in the future. Something as simple as a…ride home on an evening when he might require it. Would that be all right with you, my lady?”
“Why would you do that for him?”
Lavoie uncrossed his feet. “I wouldn’t do it for him. I’d do it for you.”
Angelique felt a curious warmth curl into her chest.
“Even if you decline my offer of employment, my regard for you will not be diminished. I’d like to think that I might remain a friend.” He spread the fingers of one hand over his knee.
The warmth in her chest started to spread outward.
“Tell me what you know about his lordship’s friends. Burleigh and Seaton.”
The warmth fled, and her stomach turned, the way it always did when George Fitzherbert, Viscount Seaton, was mentioned. Like it had when she’d realized he’d been standing on the street behind her brother. But then George had disappeared, and her brother had tried to assault a presumed assassin, and she’d been distracted enough to forget about him. But now that same assassin had asked her a question she had no desire to answer. She’d rather talk about her brother’s drinking. God, she’d rather talk about Baron Daventon’s hand on her breast.
“My lady?” Lavoie prompted. “Burleigh and Seaton?”
“I don’t know them,” she mumbled. Which wasn’t a lie, exactly. Her father and the old Baron Burleigh had been incredibly close and the friendship between their sons was a product of that, even though Vincent was a few years older. And as for Seaton, she had thought she’d known him better than anyone. Until she discovered she hadn’t known him at all.
“You’re lying again, my lady.”
Angelique started before a welcome rush of anger went through her. Of all the autocratic arrogance. She turned back to face Lavoie, trying to see his expression in the shadows. “Yes. I am.” It came out harshly.
“Why?” He didn’t seem at all concerned with her vitriol.
“Because it’s none of your damned business.” She could almost hear her mother gasp in shock at the use of such language. But damn, it felt good. She really ought to use the word damn more often. Dammit.
Lavoie watched her for a moment longer before shrugging and settling himself back against the squabs, studying her. A heavy silence descended.
“That’s it?” Angelique asked presently.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re not going to continue to interrogate me further?”
He made a sound low in his throat. “No, my lady, I’m not going to interrogate you further.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“A little.”
“Why?” she snapped, feeling a little foolish. “Is interrogation only something you do on Fridays?”
He chuckled, and the rich sound sent shivers across her skin. “Sundays, if you must know. But if I were to interrogate you further, it wouldn’t be in a moving carriage.”
“What, you’d take me to your dungeon that I’m sure you have beneath your club?” Angelique said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “Tie my wrists and ankles across a rack and pull me apart until you got what you wanted?”
“Not exactly what I was thinking.” The laughter had fled, replaced with something else entirely. “And I wouldn’t tie you up to get what I wanted. Unless, of course, you insisted on it. Then I would do anything.”
There was suddenly not enough air in the carriage. She should be horrified. Scandalized. Instead, she suddenly felt hot all over, her pulse pounding in her ears. And that same pulse seemed to be echoing somewhere deep within her belly, sending out strange currents that made her achy everywhere. Her breasts suddenly felt heavy and tight, and a restless rhythm was throbbing at the juncture of her legs.
The carriage lurched, tipping Angelique toward Lavoie. She instinctively put a hand out to steady herself, only to find it braced on one of his thighs, the muscle rock hard beneath the fabric of his trousers. She heard him suck in a harsh breath. The carriage straightened. She yanked her hand back and buried it in her skirts and tried to breathe normally.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, unsure what she was even apologizing for. But she couldn’t touch this man and hope to retain any sort of control. His touch made her lose focus. Lose concentration. Lose track of everything that wasn’t him.
“No apology necessary, my lady,” he replied. “It is I who must apologize if my comments have made you uncomfortable again.”
Unless, of course, you insisted on it. Then I would do anything.
Angelique took a steadying breath, even as her thighs clenched together involuntarily, her body still humming with something that felt suspiciously like excitement. Dear God, what was wrong with her?
Those were words she would expect from a man who owned a gaming hell. A place where wealthy, bored women came to entertain themselves. A man such as Lavoie would have had hundreds of lovers, and no doubt he was as accomplished at all manner of bed-sport as he was at business. His words had been meant to shock her, she knew, and she had deserved them. She had been acting like a shrew, and she had no right to do so, not when this man was, in fact, assisting her.
“Mr. Lavoie, I—”
There was a thump from above and then Matthews’s muffled voice filtered down, saving her having to finish.
“We’re almost here,” the driver said. “You want me to stop in front? Or go round to the mews?”
“We’ll aid his lordship through his front door, I think, Matthews. I fear anything else would raise questions should we be seen,” Lavoie responded with cool efficiency.
The abrupt return to reality was enough to douse whatever insanity had gripped her. The carriage turned sharply, the horses slowing, and within moments, the equipage creaked to a halt. Lavoie opened the door and gracefully exited, holding out a hand for Angelique. Gathering her reticule and her skirts, Angelique allowed him to help her down.
“Will anyone from the house be coming out to assist?” Lavoie asked her, glancing at the darkened townhome.
“No.” The only servant that was left was the overworked and elderly Tildy, and to wake her now would be as useless as it would be cruel. The housekeeper was barely capable of carrying a half pail of coal up the stairs, much less a drunken marquess.
Matthews appeared at their side. “You want his lordship inside now, milady?”
Angelique nodded, suddenly exhausted. All she wanted to do was to go upstairs, divest herself of her heavy gown and clothing, and crawl into her bed under a pile of blankets. “Put him in the hall. On the floor. He can’t fall or…soil anything there. I’ll fetch him a blanket.”
Matthews shrugged and stepped up into the carriage. Between Lavoie and his driver, the two men managed to manhandle Gerald out of the carriage and up the steps. Angelique opened the door for them, crossed the familiar, darkened hall, and lit a single candle. It was a cheap tallow candle that hissed and sputtered offensively and didn’t give off much light. Which in this case was an advantage in that the meager illumination concealed the fact that the hall was bare of almost all furnishings. She placed it on the small, decorative table that still remained and observed as Lavoie and his driver carefully lowered Gerald to the floor.
“Sure ye don’t want him upstairs?” Matthews asked, looking down at the heap that was her brother.
“I’m sure, thank you.” She didn’t want anyone to see the rest of the house. The hall was bad enough—the rest of the house had been stripped long ago of anything that might fetch a price.
The driver shrugged. “Very well. I’ll be outside when yer ready, Mr. Lavoie.” Matthews headed back out in the direction of his carriage, leaving Angelique standing alone with Lavoie.
She watched him warily, at a complete loss as to what to say to a supposed assassin who had escorted her home from a gaming hell, offered her a job, and now stood opposite her in the middle of a darkened hall. “Mr. Lavoie—”
“I don’t like the idea of you all alone in this house,” Lavoie said abruptly, startling her.
“I’m not alone,” Angelique told him. “I have…servants.” Well, one, anyway. “And Gerald is here for me, of course.”
“Of course.” His lip curled slightly even as his gaze flickered in the direction of her insensible brother at their feet. “If it hasn’t escaped your notice, your brother has yet to regain his faculties. And I have yet to see any evidence of a servant.”
A new wave of exhaustion nearly made her sway. “He’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Everything will be fine, Mr. Lavoie.”
“Mmmm.” He made that sound deep in his throat that she was starting to hate.
“I thank you for everything you have done for me tonight, Mr. Lavoie. Truly, I am very grateful. But I don’t need you further. I can take care of everything from here—”
“You shouldn’t have to.” In the struggling candlelight, his eyes were a deep gold. He closed the distance between them with a single step. “You shouldn’t have to…” he trailed off, a strange expression on his face.
“To what?” The words caught in her throat. He was so close to her that she could feel the warmth of him, smell a faint scent of tobacco and whiskey and something darker.
“Be alone.” He found her hand at her side and brought it up and kissed the back of her knuckles. Her mouth went dry, and that sense of yearning roared back to life, coursing through her, setting her blood on fire.
“I like being alone,” she said, realizing that her voice was trembling as much as her body.
He raised his head slowly and uncurled his fingers where they had caught hers. “Liar,” he whispered gently.
Her hand lay in his palm. She could withdraw it anytime she liked. Instead, she left it right where it was.
Because Alexander Lavoie was right.
He closed his fingers back over her hand, drawing her toward him. Their hands lowered, and his fingers intertwined with hers, keeping her captive against him. With his free hand, he reached up and found the edge of her face, tracing the line of her jaw down to the curve of her neck. With a flick of his wrist, he sent his coat sliding from her shoulders. She shivered once and then again as his fingers curled around the nape of her neck, though she felt anything but cold.
Very slowly, he lowered his head, his mouth inches from hers. She could feel his breath whisper against her cheek. She was frozen in place, afraid to move. Afraid not to. He would kiss her. Right here. Right now.
And God help her, but she wanted him to. She wanted him to do a whole lot more.
He moved then, angling his head and brushing his lips against her cheek, an impossibly brief, gentle contact that made her close her eyes. And then he was gone, cool night air invading the space between them, chilling her heated body. Her eyes popped open, and she barely managed to swallow the sound of disappointed dismay that rose.
Lavoie disentangled his hand from hers where it was trapped between them and bent, and in the next second, Angelique felt the soft warmth of his coat as he pulled it up and back over her shoulders. She couldn’t have put together a coherent sentence at just that moment if her life depended on it.
He stepped back, the shadows across his face deepening as he moved farther away from the feeble light. “I’m afraid I can’t linger, as much as I’d like to. But please tell me you’ll consider my offer?” His tone was more suited to a conversation about the weather than one about what had just happened.
And what had just happened?
Nothing, she told herself. Nothing had happened. But that nothing had left her completely disoriented, her body on fire, and her wits scattered. Nothing had left her with a fierce battle of conflicting emotions warring within her—dismay, excitement, loss, wonder. She didn’t know what to embrace first. Or last. Or at all.
“My lady?”
What had he asked? That she consider his offer? What offer? Her lust-muddled mind fought through the haze and finally cleared enough for her to realize that he was referring to his earlier offer of employment.
His question was a meteoric plummet back to reality. While she’d been imagining Alexander Lavoie kissing her, she had completely forgotten about her brother who snored not two feet away. She had forgotten that her family teetered on the edge of ruin. She had forgotten her responsibilities. She had forgotten everything.
The excitement and wonder faded away, leaving nothing behind but guilt and unhappiness.
She was not a woman returned from a ball to her castle in the clouds with her prince and true love. She was a woman returned from a gaming hell to an empty house with a possible assassin and an insensible wastrel of a brother. She pressed a hand to lips that were still tingling in futile anticipation, regret coming hard and fast.
She couldn’t work for Alexander Lavoie. Ever.
Not only had the miserable realities of her life been laid before him this night, bared for him to examine and evaluate at his leisure, but she had exposed herself. Bared the vulnerability she had tried so hard to keep buried under layers of duty and detachment. She had wanted him to kiss her with an intensity that shook her. She did not doubt for a second that he knew it.
“I’m sorry, but I cannot work for you,” she said, staring at her feet.
“Ah.” He was silent for a moment. “I’ve made you feel uncomfortable again.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I do not mix business and pleasure. Messy bedfellows, those, if you’ll pardon the pun.” He paused. “Please rest assured that, should you do me the honor of agreeing to my proposal, our relationship will remain purely professional at all times.”
Angelique blinked, trying to put a coherent thought together. “That’s not what…that is to say—”
“Come to the club tomorrow. Bring me your answer then, once you’ve had more time to consider it.” He didn’t give her time to answer but simply spun on his heel and headed toward the door. He paused, his body outlined in the frame. “I do hope you say yes, Lady Angelique. I think you and I could be very good together.”