Chapter Six
“And to what do I owe this great pleasure so early in the morning?”
Matthew turned to watch as Robert entered the parlor, hand outstretched in welcome. His friend had a hint of shadow beneath his eyes and his hair was slightly tousled, as if he had been abed recently.
“It’s noon,” Matthew said with a shake of his head.
Robert shrugged one shoulder. “If you say so. I realize most people don’t keep the civilized hours I do. Would you like a drink?”
“No,” Matthew said, and couldn’t help a laugh even though he wasn’t feeling in particularly good humor today. That was what lying awake, tossing and turning, while one thought of soft sighs and intense pleasure did to a man.
And here he was. An act of desperation.
“What’s wrong?” Robert asked, his teasing quality gone, replaced by concern.
Matthew flopped himself into the closest chair. “I’m not looking forward to how much you will crow.”
Robert took a place on the settee and leaned forward. “Oh, this does sound good.”
“I’ve been going back to the Donville Masquerade,” Matthew admitted in a rush, as if he pushed all the words together that Robert wouldn’t react to them.
Which, of course, was not true. His friend’s eyes went almost impossibly wide and then his grin went even wider. “Have you now? I knew even you would be seduced by the many pleasures to be found there.”
Matthew sighed. “It isn’t the many pleasures. I went back looking for…for that woman I met the first night.”
“The one you kissed.”
“Yes.” Matthew found his foot tapping restlessly and forced himself to stop. “When she didn’t come, there was nothing found there for me. And then, last night, she returned.”
Robert lifted his eyebrows. “Pursuing one lass wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I encouraged you to get a membership at the club, but it’s better than you roaming your estate like a ghost. So you saw the young woman and then…”
This was the difficult part. Matthew had never been one to talk about his conquests. He had no intention of going too far when he did it today, either. This was not a bragging session, but a plea for help. No matter how Robert might turn it on its head.
“What do you think happened?” he asked, his voice sharper than he had perhaps intended. But then it seemed everything in his life was currently out of control.
Robert’s expression was shocked. “I’m going to hazard a guess that you bedded her.” Matthew swallowed hard, and his expression seemed to give the answer Robert required. “That is good news. Isn’t it? Why do you look like that? Why do you look more miserable than you did before? Quite a herculean feat, by the way.”
“You must understand,” Matthew began. “It’s been such a long time.”
“So you said,” Robert said softly. “Too long to be healthy. Are you saying you were terrible at it?”
Matthew smiled at the teasing in his friend’s tone. He appreciated it, actually. Robert was trying to put levity into the situation.
“I wasn’t terrible at it,” he said as he thought of his beautiful stranger’s mewls and cries of pleasure. At the way her tight, slick body had milked his until he nearly lost control and came deep inside of her.
“Then what is the problem?” Robert asked. “Please don’t tell me you are prostrating yourself on the altar of guilt and remorse just because you spent a few hours pursuing natural and healthy pleasure with a willing partner.”
“When you put it that way, it makes me sound like a fool,” Matthew said. “And I wouldn’t say prostrating myself. It’s just that…I don’t know. You, of all people, would not understand.”
Robert held his gaze a beat, and then he said, “You thought you had found the one person who would keep your heart for the rest of your life. Like the others have. You believed that your future was set. And then it was torn out from under you in the most cruel and terrible way possible. Worse, there are some who have blamed you for it. So you’ve spent all this time mourning what might have been and cursing what is. And when a young lady finally moves your…shall we say heart or cock?” He laughed. “Well, either way, I suppose it must be very disconcerting. And it must also awaken some dark and dangerous memories and feelings.”
Matthew gaped at him. “I would not have expected that summary from you.”
A ghost of a smile slipped over Robert’s face. “I do not believe in love for myself. It does not mean I discount it for anyone else. And I’m a cad, proud as hell of it, and with no intention of ever changing, thank you, but I’m not an idiot.”
“No one would ever accuse you of that,” Matthew said softly. “And yes, what you say is exactly part of it. At first, I was merely mourning. Coming to terms with what had happened to Angelica and my part in it. Then more and more time passed and it was as if I became…paralyzed by my grief, regret…my anger and my disappointment.”
“And then this girl popped up,” Robert said. “And suddenly you were awake again. Perplexing, I would imagine.”
“Quite.”
“So you came here for advice on how one circumvents all deeper feeling in the pursuit of pleasure?” Robert asked. “I am the expert.”
“No.” Matthew chuckled. “I’m here because last night, when it was all over, she saw my face. And she ran.”
Robert leaned back in the settee with a shake of his head. “My God, it’s like a novel. Or a children’s story with a very naughty twist. You think she recognized you?”
“It’s the best explanation. She knows me somehow and it terrified her. So she ran. And I…want to find out who she is. Will you help me?”
Robert arched a brow. “Me? Why would you ask me? I’m the one who would sigh in relief if a lady ran away after making love. Makes the set down a bit easier.”
“Somehow I doubt your ego would love a woman running, practically screaming from your bed,” Matthew said. “And I’m asking you because Hugh is distracted, Kit is…dealing with his father’s illness and everyone else is—”
“Pushy,” Robert finished. “Very pushy since they married.”
Matthew nodded. “That’s one word for it. If I mentioned an interest in a woman, no matter how unsavory the beginning, they would start falling over each other encouraging me to marry for love like they have. One of us four must be the next, in their eyes.”
Robert recoiled. “Well, it won’t be me. You and I already discussed this.”
“It can’t be me,” Matthew said. “I barely allowed myself to take a little pleasure last night. I’m not thinking about forever.”
“And yet you want to find her,” Robert said.
Matthew rolled his eyes. “Don’t you start. I want to find her because her reaction troubled me. I need to know why she was so frightened when she saw my face.”
“No other reason,” Robert drawled.
Matthew felt heat in his cheeks. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. It was one night of pleasure—I had no expectation of anything more. You of all people should know that feeling.”
Robert held up his hands, almost in surrender. Then he smiled. “It is good to see you driven by something other than grief. I’ll help you. Only it won’t be easy. Rivers guards his membership roster jealously.”
“It’s in his best interest to do so, of course,” Matthew said. “But does that mean there’s no hope in discovering who she is?”
“I can check around, ask some questions, grease some wheels with a little blunt,” Robert said.
“I don’t need you to—”
“Don’t you dare take away my pleasure in this little game,” his friend interrupted. “I have more than enough to play. Your best bet, however, might simply be to keep going to the Donville Masquerade. She was going there before, we know at least twice.”
“You think she would return after such an abrupt exit?” Matthew asked, and his heart leapt at the thought.
Robert shrugged. “I have no idea what goes on in the minds of women. But if this encounter between you was powerful enough to inspire you to chase, inspired her to run…it follows that she might return to the scene of the…crime might be too strong a word.”
“Yes, thank you,” Matthew said. “Very well. I can do that. I’ll go back to the Donville and continue looking for her. And if you can find out her identity before I see her again, then all the better.”
“What do you intend to do when you find her?” Robert asked.
Matthew opened and shut his mouth a few times. There was a question he’d been trying very hard not to answer, even to himself. Check on her was the first answer that rushed to his lips, but he knew that his desire went far deeper than that. Deep enough that it was not something he wished to ponder overly much.
He’d find her. And what to do would become clear then.
Isabel watched as her uncle paced in front of the portrait of Angelica. The fact that he had insisted they take their tea in this parlor, in front of the shrine he had built there to the daughter he’d lost, was not helping Isabel’s nerves whatsoever.
Every time she looked at Angelica’s beautiful face, she thought of Tyndale, poised between her own thighs, his wonderful tongue doing wildly pleasurable things.
She thought of that, and the moment when his mask had slipped and she’d realized that the man who had given her such pleasure was the very one Uncle Fenton had been railing on about for years. The one he believed had killed her cousin.
The one he despised more than any other man on this earth.
“Uncle?” she said, interrupting his pacing.
He jolted, almost as if he had forgotten she was there, and turned to her. He looked tired. Drawn out. He didn’t sleep much, she knew that. Grief had gripped him and it sometimes felt like it was edging toward madness. But she had no idea what to do for him.
“What is it?” he asked.
She swallowed hard. To talk to him about this was to open a Pandora’s box. And yet she had to do it. For her own sanity.
“Do you truly believe that Tyndale killed my cousin?” she asked.
He stiffened and his gaze grew faraway. Clouded. “She drowned,” he said, the tremble heavy in his voice. “She drowned and it was his fault. He did it to her. He did it.”
Isabel gripped her hands in her lap. That was not exactly a satisfactory or even clear answer. There were so little details about Angelica’s death. Drowning, yes, she knew that. It had been labeled as a tragic accident by Society. People had clucked their tongues and murmured sympathetic noises at her family, at the duke, himself.
It was only Uncle Fenton who implied that Tyndale had more to do with it. That somehow he was at fault. But he never made it clear what he meant by the accusation. Isabel had never felt motivated to garner more details from him. He believed Tyndale responsible and that had little to do with her.
Until now. Now that she had climbed into a bed with Matthew, given herself to him entirely, the facts of that horrible night seemed far more pressing. And her uncle’s belief seemed far less acceptable. Tyndale had been nothing but gentle with her. Passionate, but kind.
It was hard to believe he was a killer, as Uncle Fenton did.
She tapped her foot beneath her gown and looked at Angelica’s portrait. They could have been no less alike. Her cousin had been fair and tall. Isabel was dark and petite. Angelica was popular and rich, Isabel came from a merchant’s family. Their only connection to Society was her uncle on her mother’s side.
She’d liked her cousin, of course. Angelica had been a few years older and so sophisticated and beautiful. How could one not be enchanted by her?
Now she found herself looking at the portrait and wondering about her relationship with Matthew. Not just the particulars of her death, but the details of whatever life they had shared. Had Angelica kissed him as Isabel had? Had she given herself to him?
She didn’t know the answers. By the time Angelica was engaged to the man, they’d been living such different lives. Isabel was just coming out in their Society, her father was already arranging her own marriage. They barely wrote anymore, and when Angelica did her letters were filled with upper Society tidbits about people Isabel didn’t even know and vague references to her future.
She’d seemed happy enough, certainly, and Isabel hadn’t been that interested in pressing into a world she had no connection to. Now she wished she had.
“Would you mind very much if I called on Sarah?” Isabel asked.
Her uncle ceased his pacing and stared at her. He shrugged. “Whatever you like. Take the carriage, but I need it back by six. I have an appointment.”
“Certainly,” Isabel said. “Thank you, uncle.”
He ignored her and pivoted to look at the portrait of his daughter. She frowned. When he did that, he would sometimes get lost for hours. And drink. And God knew what else.
She slipped from the room and asked for the carriage. Soon she was dashing through the streets, her hands clenched in her lap, wondering how she was going to tell Sarah what had happened.
And wondering what in the world she would do next.
“The Duke of Tyndale?” Sarah gasped. “The one your uncle is convinced killed your cousin?”
“Yes,” Isabel said, sinking into the closest seat and covering her eyes. She had been at Sarah’s house for all of ten minutes and the entire story had spilled from her lips. “Oh God. I never meant to go so far with any man. But how could it be him, Sarah? How?”
“It is a mighty coincidence,” her friend said, voice trembling. “But how…was it?”
Isabel stared at her with wide eyes. Sarah had never been married—she was an innocent, and yet she seemed truly interested in details of activities that Isabel knew she shouldn’t talk about. But oh, how she needed to do just that.
“Wonderful. Erotic,” she admitted with a deep blush. “Terrifying.”
Sarah’s jaw tightened in displeasure at that last descriptor. “Because he was threatening?” she asked.
Isabel shook her head. “No, not at all. He was gentle. He was even kind.”
“I’m glad of that.” The tension seemed to bleed from Sarah’s face. “But it does beg the question of why you did it.”
Isabel pushed to her feet and paced the room. “Because…my future is already laid out. My father ensured it. Now my uncle intends to do the same. Neither one is worried about my heart, my body…just my financial security. It is the way of our world, but it is so…”
Sarah sighed. “Depressing. To think that there would never be…love or passion.”
Isabel turned and found Sarah’s head bent. She moved to her and caught her hands. “How bad is it?”
Sarah pursed her lips. “You want to change the subject and we shall, but not yet. I understand why, I do. And so do you. But what will you do?”
“I don’t know,” Isabel said with a shudder. “What can I do after…this? I don’t want to believe that Tyndale is a killer. Not after last night. Honestly, not even before. But now I’ve…I’ve given myself to him and that was never in the plan to begin with. So what do I do?”
“Does he know who you are?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t think so. My mask remained on, somehow. And even if it had come off, we never met.”
“You didn’t?” Sarah seemed surprised.
“You and I are from different worlds.” Isabel shrugged. “I wasn’t raised to go to Society parties like you were. Perhaps I could have done thanks to my mother’s connection to Uncle Fenton, but my father was against it. A lower-class snob, my uncle called him.”
“But still, you were family. Close enough for your uncle to take you in once your husband died and your mother and father were gone.”
The look on Sarah’s face told Isabel that she was thinking of her own mother, so sick in a bedroom above. Isabel clenched her friend’s hands tighter in support.
“No, never met. If they had married, I would have. I was invited to the wedding. But of course Angelica died before it could happen. I just know him due to portraits and my uncle pointing him out if we passed him in a carriage or a park.”
“Isn’t it possible he saw a portrait of you?” Sarah suggested.
“I suppose it is. But it’s doubtful. Angelica didn’t carry miniatures of me around, I assure you. If he saw one of me in my uncle’s home, it would have been one done when I was a little girl. There would be no way for him to recognize me.”
Sarah seemed to ponder that a moment. Then she gave Isabel a look. “Could you…could you use the opportunity to investigate him?”
Isabel drew back. She’d been so wrapped up in abject terror and confusion and heated memories of being in the man’s bed, she hadn’t thought of that as a possibility. “How do you mean?” she asked.
“He wanted you,” Sarah said. “Enough that he gave you a wonderful and erotic night in his arms.”
Isabel shuddered slightly. “You forgot terrifying. If you’re going to throw my words back at me, throw them all.”
“But it was terrifying because you, the planner, did not control or expect what happened, yes?” Sarah pressed.
Isabel sighed. “Yes. It was the shock of it, and of discovering his identity, that made me say terrifying.”
“Well, then your running away likely only increased his desire.”
Isabel wrinkled her brow. “Is that true?”
Sarah stared off toward the window for a moment, her expression pinched. “When ladies run, gentlemen follow.”
Isabel’s lips parted. The bitterness in her friend’s tone reminded her that Sarah was more involved in the world of Matthew and his friends than she was. And it had ended badly.
“Are you thinking of the Duke and Duchess of Crestwood?” she asked. “That situation two summers ago?”
Sarah glanced at her. Isabel knew there were few people she had told that story to. That her friend had thought for a moment that Crestwood might be interested, but his passion for Meg had been too powerful, despite her engagement to his friend. The entire situation had exploded, and in a moment in her cups, Sarah had said something to Meg and been taken to task on it.
Now Sarah’s cheeks were dark with embarrassed color. “They’re well matched,” she admitted at last. “It’s obvious they deeply love each other. I just…I’ve lost so much since then. I think I regret the opportunity, the last one I had, rather than the man.”
“I wish I could help you.”
“You can’t,” Sarah said. “I am in the position I am in. There is nothing that can be done about it. But you are in a different position. You’ll be taken care of, no matter what happens. So you can do things so you don’t regret the opportunity or the man.”
“Are you talking about the opportunity to, as you say, investigate Tyndale, or to have an excuse to see him again?” Isabel asked.
Sarah smiled, and some of the trouble left her gaze. “Both. One leads to the other, at any rate.”
Isabel got up. “You are talking about me seducing him in order to determine if he did something to my cousin.”
Sarah nodded. “It would be dangerous, I suppose.”
“Except I can’t believe my uncle’s accusations are true,” Isabel said. “After spending a little time with him, intimately at that, I don’t see him as the kind of man who would do something to hurt someone he loved. To hurt anyone at all.”
“You don’t want to believe it,” Sarah suggested.
“I don’t want to believe it,” Isabel repeated. “But if I could prove his innocence, wouldn’t that free my uncle?”
“He is obsessed,” Sarah said. “I’ve seen the altar he’s built to Angelica, I’ve heard him rail in desperation about her being taken from him. If you could free him of the notion that his daughter was murdered, I would hope it would leave him to grieve and perhaps move on.”
“Yes.” Isabel’s thoughts on the matter becoming lighter as they analyzed the benefits. “That would be a selfless reason to do something so bold.”
“And you want to see him again,” Sarah said, folding her arms and spearing Isabel with a look.
Now it was her turn to have her cheeks heat. “I…do. I do want to see him again. I panicked when I realized who he was, but it doesn’t change that night and how it made me feel. It doesn’t change that soon I will never get to feel that way again. There is no reason for him to find out it is me, is there? I still won’t move in his circles. There is no harm that can come of it.”
She was saying it to convince herself, not Sarah. And she was doing just that.
“It seems like a scenario with very little downside,” Sarah said. “Unless he turns out to be a killer.”
Isabel flinched at the thought and pushed it aside. “Well, if he does, then perhaps I could help bring him to justice. You are right. I should do this. It’s my only chance.”
Sarah smiled softly. “You know I know about those. You can’t walk away from them.”
“And I won’t,” Isabel said. “I won’t. I’ll go back to the masquerade and find him again. And this time I’ll do it with my eyes wide open and my agenda in place.”
“But you’ll wait a few days,” Sarah said.
Isabel’s heart dropped far more quickly than it should have. “Why?”
“Because you’re running, Isabel,” Sarah laughed. “And the longer you do so, the more desperate he’ll be in the chase. And in whatever happens once he catches you.”
Isabel swallowed hard as she recalled his hands on her, his mouth on her, his big body moving over and in her. Desperate seemed a good thing when it came to desire.
And she was about to see what it looked like on the Duke of Tyndale.