singular emotion overcame Daisy when she awoke the next morning: relief.
It stayed with her, unfurling in her belly like a summer blossom, as she dressed and went about her toilette with the assistance of her lady’s maid. She took extra care in choosing a morning gown of deep purple silk that set off her complexion and blonde hair to advantage. It hugged her curves and had an elaborately flounced skirt and lace trimming on the bodice that drew the eye to her bosom.
She’d noticed that the Duke of Trent’s eyes had a tendency to linger there. And last night, his mouth had been upon her. The recollection made heat suffuse her, coloring her cheeks.
“Miss Daisy, you’re a vision in that dress,” said Abigail as they both surveyed her efforts in the glass.
“Not precisely a vision,” Daisy denied. “But this will do, I think.”
“It will more than do, miss.” Her lady’s maid was quick to refute her in that effusive way she had. Abigail had been with her for as long as Daisy could recall, and her generous smiles and flattery sometimes seemed unnatural. “Not many ladies can carry off aubergine well, but you can claim that distinction.”
“Thank you, Abigail. We both know I couldn’t carry off anything at all if it weren’t for your help. You’re such a dab hand with hairstyles.” She made a face at her reflection, dispelling the serene picture she’d presented.
If there was anything she’d learned in her twenty years of life, it was that she should never take herself or anyone else too seriously. Once, she had, and she’d paid dearly for her mistakes. She’d trusted and believed. She’d loved with the worshipful adherence of a true naïf. And she had been, like the child warned of a hot stove nevertheless reaching out to test its scorching surface, thoroughly burned.
Dreams could be dashed in a day. A heart could be so easily broken.
Nothing was forever. Nothing was certain.
She’d finally realized she had no choice, no option as a female dependent upon her father and his endless wealth and equally endless cruelty, and she had fashioned herself into a new Daisy. This Daisy knew how to dress, knew how to style her hair, knew how to flirt with a man and lure him into a dark alcove for a stolen kiss. She kept her heart from her sleeve. She was brazen and bold, and she used every weapon in her arsenal to get what she wanted.
Last night had been no different. Today would be no different.
The only thing that mattered was that she would finally achieve what she wanted most. She would be free from her father’s rule and free from being forced to marry the repugnant Lord Breckly.
“Everything will soon change for me, I think,” she told her lady’s maid with a confidence that was only slightly shaken by the knowledge that she knew precious little about the man to whom she would soon bind herself. Two meetings and a passionate embrace was hardly enough for her to call him an acquaintance, let alone marry him. But her father’s edict had been clear, and his return, along with the announcement of her betrothal to Breckly, imminent. Placed in such a position, what could she have done differently?
Where else could she turn in London, a relatively strange city to her, with no funds and no friends to speak of? She could sell her king’s ransom in diamonds, try to run free and start a new life somewhere else. But the only other time she’d attempted such a feat, her father had found her with ease. Selling a magnificent cache of diamonds had a way of rendering one’s anonymity impossible. Her homecoming had earned her a broken rib.
As she quit her chamber and made her way downstairs to meet Aunt Caroline in the salon, the relief inside her slowly withered, leaving in its wake a stern sense of misgiving. So much could yet go wrong. Her father could still refuse the match and demand that she wed his chosen bridegroom instead. The duke could decide not to offer for her. Or, worse, he could turn out to be a man who was violent against women. Or a lecher. Or something else equally odious.
By the time she entered the salon to find not only her aunt but the Duke of Trent within, she was wringing her hands at her waist, a dreadful habit she could never seem to shake whenever she was ill at ease. No matter how unladylike it was. When her gaze met the duke’s, she stopped, halfway over the threshold, and tore her hands apart.
An unaccountable burst of nervousness assailed her. He was early. Or perhaps she was late. It didn’t matter. All that did matter was that he was here. He had come. And he stood at her half-entry to the chamber, debonair in his gray jacket and silver waistcoat, tall and brooding and even more handsome than he’d been last night. His expression possessed an intensity that seemed to call for her entire attention. Her every sense focused upon the gorgeous man who just last night had pulled down her bodice and taken her bare breast into his mouth as though she was already his.
No man had ever been so daring with her.
Thinking of the wet heat of his mouth upon her nipple sent an ache between her thighs. Dear heavens, had she actually just thought about such a thing in the bright morning light, with her aunt as an audience? How shameless.
“Daisy,” Aunt Caroline said then, her tone tight with the same disapproval she had used to dress Daisy down during the carriage ride home the night before. “You kept His Grace waiting.”
Daisy couldn’t tear her eyes from the duke, who pinned her with a similar, rapt stare. “My apologies.” Belatedly, she realized she had yet to enter the room. She forced herself to move forward with as much grace as she could muster while his eyes all but consumed her. “Good morning, Aunt Caroline, Your Grace.”
“No apology is necessary, Miss Vanreid, as such loveliness is more than worth any wait,” said the duke with smooth charm.
Daisy seated herself on a settee at her aunt’s side. “You’re too kind, Duke.”
He inclined his head, as if his manners wouldn’t allow him to argue the point. The air became stilted as silence fell upon the sunny chamber. A mantle clock ticked. At last, Aunt Caroline disrupted the uncomfortable quiet.
“As I was informing Your Grace before my niece arrived, Mr. Vanreid will be arriving in London soon. He was attending business in Liverpool, but he has been apprised of the… situation. He telegrammed this morning to say that he alone will conduct all further matters with you directly upon his return, Your Grace.”
Her father was in Liverpool? Daisy had thought him still traveling across the Atlantic. The knowledge that he wasn’t both troubled and surprised her. Apparently, Aunt Caroline was privier to her father’s business than Daisy was. The realization made Daisy look at her aunt with new eyes. No one knew better than Daisy just how ruthless and cruel her father could be.
That her father wanted to conduct matters with the duke, however, distressed her even more. For he hadn’t sent an outright acceptance of an impending marriage. A fist of dread closed on Daisy’s heart.
She refused to believe that she could be so close to freedom, only to be thwarted.
No.
Two sets of eyes swung to her.
Had she said that aloud? Apparently so. She flushed. “Aunt Caroline, can you not act in Father’s stead?”
Her aunt’s eyebrows nearly touched her hairline. “You cannot be serious, young lady. We find ourselves in an untenable situation brought about by your own thoughtless recklessness and wicked behavior. I would not presume to speak on your father’s behalf. I can imagine he has a great deal to say to you and His Grace both, and I cannot think any of it will be good.”
Well. It seemed Aunt Caroline was decidedly not in her corner. She supposed she ought not to be surprised, for her aunt had been ever touting the illustrious match her father planned for her with Lord Breckly. It wasn’t as if they had ever shared anything more than each other’s company. Certainly never a warm embrace.
Aunt Caroline had no children of her own, and there was nothing maternal about her. Daisy felt the familiar, old pang of loss whenever she thought of her own mother, who’d been gone for so long she was nothing more than a lock of hair pressed behind glass on a mourning pin and a shadowy remembrance.
The duke cleared his throat, his expression growing pained. “Mrs. Stanley, I’m afraid the fault of this ‘untenable situation,’ as you’ve called it, must be laid upon no one but me. I’ve been smitten by your niece ever since I first saw her, and last night I allowed my base nature to prevail. The only way to rectify the insult I’ve paid Miss Vanreid is by offering marriage, which I fully intend to do upon Mr. Vanreid’s arrival.”
Aunt Caroline wasn’t so easily swayed. In the absence of wine, she was an absolute stickler. She directed an expression of extreme displeasure in the duke’s direction. “I’m sure you were dazzled by Daisy’s beauty. Everyone is. However, there is the matter of her impending betrothal to Lord Breckly to be considered now. Mr. Vanreid remains set on his lordship.”
The duke smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m sure you will agree that, given yesterday’s turn of events, a match between Lord Breckly and Miss Vanreid is no longer possible.”
He didn’t appear any happier than Aunt Caroline to be engaged in this early morning audience. Perhaps he regretted his actions and wished he could extricate himself by more impermanent means than marriage.
But it was too late. The dye had been cast. And Daisy had no intention of becoming Lady Breckly. Mr. Vanreid remains set on his lordship. However, surely her father would agree that a duke, even one who had compromised her, was a far better catch than a mere viscount. Surely in this one instance, if none other in her life, her father would see reason.
For an instant, the memory of the last time she’d been set on marrying a man returned to her. She shook it from her mind, tucking it back into the past where it belonged. The bruises on her body had long ago faded. The bruise on her heart had taken far longer to disappear.
“I cannot presume to know what my brother will agree to, Your Grace,” Aunt Caroline said then, further churning up Daisy’s fears. “He wishes the best for my niece.”
That was a blatant falsehood. Her father wished what was best for himself in all things. Her aunt’s words suggested what Daisy began to suspect—that her father would not necessarily abandon his plan of marrying her to Breckly. What was it that the man had over her father? Daisy wished she knew. Wished she understood the tangled web in which she’d found herself. With each day, she grew more and more convinced that her father was involved in something nefarious.
And that Padraig was as well.
She didn’t know how the pieces of the puzzle slid together, but all she did know was that she didn’t want to be a part of any of it. The mere thought of her father’s arrival was enough to make her queasy. She’d been free of his presence, living a charmed life in London, for two months. His return threatened to change everything.
The duke’s gaze was once again fastened upon her, and she couldn’t help but think he assessed her, taking in far more of her than she would have preferred. Whatever he saw in her expression, it made him turn back to Aunt Caroline with a stern frown.
“Mrs. Stanley.” His accent was perfectly modulated, crisp. “I feel quite certain that Mr. Vanreid will find my pedigree faultless. Until he arrives and we can be assured of his blessing, however, I would like your permission to formally court Miss Vanreid, beginning with a turn about the gardens. Are you amenable to that?”
Aunt Caroline appeared very much the opposite of amenable, but she was faced with a prickly conundrum: insult a duke or adhere to her misplaced loyalty to her brother. Her lips compressed into a firm line. “Very well,” she relented. “But you may not go out of sight of the window, Your Grace. I’ll be watching.”
A smile quirked the corner of his sensual lips, his first true sign of levity thus far. “Naturally, madam. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Sebastian guided Miss Vanreid into the crisp morning air, all too aware of the glare trained on his back by the aunt. She was a deal more formidable when not befuddled by drink, that much was certain. Just as it was also certain that the woman clutching his arm in a manacle-like grip feared her father.
And unless his instincts were mistaken, she feared her father a great deal. He recognized the flash in her eyes, the tense set of her shoulders, the way she’d seemed to withdraw. All the boldness, daring, and brilliance that was Daisy Vanreid had withered and died before him in the salon at the mention of her father’s return.
Part of him knew he shouldn’t give a damn about what past terrors haunted the flirtatious beauty alongside him. But another part of him, a part he didn’t care to examine too closely, suggested that learning the story behind Miss Vanreid’s distress would aid him in his cause.
The more information he could uncover about Vanreid, the better. Perhaps earning his daughter’s trust would also garner some additional information. If she was involved in the dynamite plots, showing her kindness could be a way to sidestep any barriers she’d seek to erect between them.
There was also the troubling matter that he had actually felt… something when he’d noted Miss Vanreid’s subtly quelled terror. That he’d felt anything at all irritated him. He’d been trained, damn it. He was meant to feel nothing. No emotion, no pity, and certainly not kindness. Not concern or worry.
Absolutely not protective.
He refused to believe any of those emotions were the source of the odd tightness in his chest as he stopped with her now, just before a dormant rose bush and still within full view of her disapproving aunt. Where was a bottle of champagne and the Duke of Carlisle when he needed him? he wondered grimly.
Sebastian stared unseeing at the desiccated gardens for a beat before turning to Miss Vanreid. He tried not to notice how comely she was, even from the side. Outdoors, away from her aunt and the looming specter of her father, she outshone the sunshine. The purple of her gown heightened her creamy skin and the burnished coils of her thick hair. Everything about the gown, from its cinched waist to its lace trim, was designed to call attention to her impeccable figure and the sweet curve of her bosom. The dolman she’d donned to ward off the chill air did little to conceal her fine figure.
Damn it, he thought as he surveyed her profile, a wardrobe of dresses that buttoned to the throat wouldn’t be enough to tame her beauty or its effect upon him. Bloody hell. Maybe it would be unwise to see this assignment through.
But no. He had a duty. He’d sworn an oath. The lives of so many innocents were at peril.
“Miss Vanreid,” he bit out, displeased by the tumult she set off within him. “You seemed ill at ease back in the salon. What causes you such grief?”
She was silent, seemingly engrossed in a study of the dormant rose bushes. “I don’t wish to marry Lord Breckly, Your Grace.” Her voice was low, toneless. “Is it your intention to wed me?”
Wed her? Everything within him screamed no. Bed her? Everything within him screamed yes. His cock surged against his trousers and he shifted slightly to minimize the evidence of her extreme effect on him. She was an anomaly. Enigmatic, beautiful, seductive, but also quiet and imbued with a sadness he didn’t yet comprehend. He would learn her. Would learn every one of her secrets before he was through.
“It would be my honor, Miss Vanreid, to make you my wife,” he lied.
She turned to him finally, subjecting him to the full force of her undeniable beauty. “Have you ever hit a woman?”
Her question took the air from his lungs. What kind of a woman asked such a thing? The kind who had been abused, his instincts told him. The kind who sought to avoid entanglement in a situation similar to the one in which she already found herself.
“Of course not,” he answered past his shock, pausing a beat to read her expression. “Do you trust me?”
She pursed her lips together, taking her time to answer. “I know little of you, Your Grace, so to say that I trust you implicitly would make a liar of me.”
Ah, there was candor, he supposed, pointed as a dagger. “Such wisdom from one so young is a rarity.”
As the words left him, he realized how pompous he sounded. How ducal. He hadn’t meant to imply she wasn’t intelligent. Far from it—her intellect and her daring were the two traits that attracted him to her the most. Anyone could be beautiful. But not everyone could be bold and smart and fearless. The lady before him—duplicitous enemy of the Crown or no—was all of those things.
She was the sort of woman who, in different times, he would have been proud to call his duchess. Given the circumstances, the dubious cloud of her associations, and the fact that he’d been charged with viewing her as an enemy, his feelings for her in this moment could not be rooted in anything less rational than duty. For the spy, control was everything. Emotions had to be carefully excised, as infection from a wound, else the entire limb would require amputation.
Grim thought, that. But fitting.
She stiffened, oblivious to the unsettling bent of his thoughts, her chin tilting up in ravishing defiance. “Age is a fallacious indicator of intelligence, Your Grace.”
“So it can be,” he acknowledged, taking a step toward her. Her skirts billowed into his trousers. Her scent enveloped him. The morning was yet again unseasonably warm, yet still cold, and so he couldn’t be certain whether the scarcely discernible tremble that passed over her just then was from the chill or from something else. “You’re wise to withhold your trust until it’s earned. But know that I would never intentionally cause you harm.”
Was that even true? Hell, he didn’t know any longer. He would never hit her. Would never bring physical pain upon her. Anything else? He couldn’t promise. His time with her was as ephemeral as life itself.
Her wide, green eyes, vibrant in this sleeping garden of drab browns and withered moss, plumbed his. “You must know that I haven’t a choice, Your Grace. If you are a dishonest man, no pain you could visit upon me would surpass that which I’ve already endured. Forgive me for my honesty, but you are the lesser of all evils, as far as I can discern.”
Her gaze didn’t flinch from his, and he knew then that some of the enigma that was Daisy Vanreid had been revealed to him. An unfamiliar sensation, troubling and tense, rose within him as full realization settled. There was only one conclusion here that made sense.
Gently, he touched her elbow, not wishing to cause her further distress. “Has your father hit you, sweet?”
She looked away in a clear sign that he had guessed correctly. “Of course he hasn’t.”
“Miss Vanreid,” he pressed, catching her stubborn chin and guiding her face back to his. “Daisy. If I’m to help you, then you must be honest with me. Has your father inflicted violence upon you?”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Yes.” Shame steeped her tone.
There it was again, that coiled sensation in his chest. The tightening in his gut. A grim, raw fury lit within him. Her father had struck her. More than once. He’d caused her pain, done her violence. A primitive urge to defend her rose, battling to supremacy over every other emotion. Even over his work as a spy. He didn’t question it. Didn’t think twice.
“He will never raise a hand to you again once you’re my wife,” he vowed, his voice shaking with the furor trapped inside him. “This I swear. Nor will I ever abuse you in any fashion.”
These were promises he could make her.
Jesus, they were the only promises he could make her.
Miss Vanreid—the vibrant, flirtatious beauty who had never stepped down or batted a lash since he’d been watching her—trembled beneath his touch. The cynic in him reminded him that it could all be a ruse. Someone as bold and laissez-faire with her reputation as she was seemed at odds with the vulnerable, frightened woman before him now.
His training, however, led him to believe in her sincerity. Perhaps the true act was the Daisy Vanreid she showed the world, because inside she was terrified and desperate to escape her father’s clutches. So desperate she’d throw herself into the arms of any man who’d catch her.
“I can’t be certain he will allow a union between us, Your Grace,” she whispered, as though she feared her aunt could somehow distinguish their dialogue even from within the elegant townhouse at their backs. “For some reason, he has been determined that I should marry the Viscount Breckly. Aunt Caroline says they’ve reached an understanding for my hand. The announcement of the betrothal was only awaiting my father’s arrival.”
There was something suspicious indeed about Vanreid’s determination to wed his sole daughter to an aging reprobate. He would hazard a guess that the impetus had something to do with Breckly’s ancestral estate in Ireland. He was quite an influential man in his home country. Clearly, Sebastian would need to further investigate the connection between the two men.
Miss Vanreid seemed to be the sacrificial lamb binding them. And reluctantly from the looks of things. He couldn’t blame her. No one as lovely, youthful, and alluring as she ought to be saddled with an elderly oaf for a husband. The mere thought of Breckly in her bed was enough to make Sebastian bilious.
“I find it curious that you believe your father would prefer a mere viscount to a duke who is much nearer in age to you.” He searched her expression for any sign that she knew more than she let on.
But her mossy eyes never wavered from his. “As do I, Your Grace. There seems to be a reason for my father’s preference in suitor, but I cannot think of anything to recommend Lord Breckly at all.”
“Nor can I.” He noticed that a small tendril of hair had willfully escaped from her coif to curl against her ear, and before he even realized what he was about, he caught it in his fingers. It was every bit as silky and soft as he’d imagined it would be, and damned if he didn’t conjure up an image of her with her hair unbound, those golden waves falling past her shoulders. Nude. In his bed.
Good God.
He went rigid in his trousers. It was an effect she seemed to regularly have on him. One that he couldn’t control regardless of the serious nature of his assignment or the fact that he still couldn’t trust her and had no intention of being a true husband to her. The sooner they could be granted an annulment, the better. But first he had to manage to marry her.
“I don’t want to marry Lord Breckly,” she said suddenly. “My father… when he returns, I don’t know what he will do.”
Her words effectively chilled his ardor. He tucked the errant curl behind her ear, severing their physical connection, for it clouded his judgment. “Do you have reason to fear him?”
She closed her eyes, her breath hitching. Her lids fluttered open again, unshed tears glistening and turning her eyes an even brighter shade of green. “I cannot be here when he returns. I won’t. Neither will I marry Lord Breckly. I will do anything, Your Grace. Anything.”
Her vehemence struck a chord within him. The truth was that Carlisle had procured a marriage license by registrar. The cagey bastard had already had it in hand before he’d even deigned to inform Sebastian of the necessity for marrying Miss Vanreid. It would never cease to amaze him just how much could be accomplished—how many laws and rules could be ignored, cast aside, and broken—in the name of keeping England safe. The League was shadowy yet omnipotent.
He made up his mind. There would be no courting of Vanreid as Carlisle had wanted, no ingratiating himself to Miss Vanreid’s father in the hope of winning her hand in a rushed but nevertheless proper manner. Sebastian was a spy, and his allegiance was to England, but he was also a gentleman. And there was no bloody way he would stand idly by knowing she would be brutalized for actions that were of his own making.
There were pawns and then there were pawns. He had never been asked to stoop to this level before, to risk his own progeny, the line of the Trent duchy, in the name of Crown and country. To marry a woman he knew nothing about, a woman who could either be a traitor, a spy, or worse. To turn a blind eye to the fact that her father had clearly beaten her often enough and badly enough to terrify her.
That he wouldn’t do. He wouldn’t consign Daisy Vanreid to any hells that were greater than those she’d already visited. “How much freedom do you have here?” he asked curtly.
“None unless Aunt Caroline is otherwise distracted.”
He knew the sort of distraction that would appeal to dear Aunt Caroline. Carlisle had a face the ladies swooned for. Christ knew why, for most of the time, Sebastian longed to plant a fist into the man’s supercilious chin. Only his oath kept him from mayhem.
“If Aunt Caroline has sufficient distraction tomorrow afternoon, do you think you could leave without anyone’s notice?” he asked, relishing the prospect of informing Carlisle he’d need to dance attendance on a middle-aged harpy with a weakness for liquor and cock. Mayhap not in that precise order.
Miss Vanreid’s eyes widened. “I believe I could. What do you have in mind?”
“Two o’clock tomorrow, and you shall find out.” He forced his eyes away from Miss Vanreid’s lovely, upturned face just in time to see her aunt storming toward them, skirts flapping with indignation. It would appear he had tarried too long in the sunshine and Miss Vanreid’s decadent presence. “I’ll be waiting in an unmarked carriage. Bring only what you require.”
“My conscience demands that I warn you that my father will almost certainly rescind my dowry should I defy him, Your Grace,” she began, only for him to interrupt her.
“I don’t require your dowry. While it’s a well-known fact that many of my peers are pockets to let, I need not fear penury. I’ve a substantial sum of my own, so you needn’t worry yourself on that score.” He paused as the aunt stalked ever closer. “Trust that I’ll make certain your father can never lay another hand on you again.”
She heaved a sigh of relief, as though he’d just rescued her from the maws of certain ruin.
Little did she know that her downward spiral was only just beginning. There would be no fists or brute strength leveled against her. But there would be a reckoning. He would determine how much she knew, and whether or not she was complicit. And if she was complicit, her father would be the least of her fears.