It would have been better if she"d never sided with the rey at all. "Much as you must all be enjoying seeing me make mistakes and squirm because of them, the real issue is not what happens between Josefina and myself. It"s how to correct my-our family"s-a.s.sociation with Embry."
"b.u.g.g.e.r that," Shay retorted bluntly. "Whatever we might have said about your interference in our lives, no one in this room wishes you pain."
Seeing their serious, concerned faces, he would accept that statement as the truth. "Very well. To buy us some time, tomorrow I will play the son-in-law-to-be," he decided. "Embry may think that including me in his plans helps him, but it also helps me. I still have questions, and he"s the best one to answer them."
"What about the-"
"Shay, go back to Eton and get John Rice-Able. Hide him somewhere, but I want him available in the event that we need someone"s word to counter Embry"s. As for the rest, I think we"ll have to wait until after my meeting. I can prepare, but he still has to make the next move."
"I don"t like it," Zach protested anyway. "One of us should go with you tomorrow."
"Not if I want him to say anything helpful. Go home. We"ll meet back here for dinner."
In pairs his siblings and in-laws bade him good night and left. His head ached. What the devil was he supposed to do between now and the morning? Sleep was out of the question. Riddles and knots twisted his insides until he could barely breathe, much less think straight. There had to be something he"d missed, something he could do that would make a difference. What that something might be, though, continued to elude him. The rest of the family might enjoy seeing his human side, but he took absolutely no pleasure in revealing his own b.l.o.o.d.y mistakes.
The last to leave were Nell and Valentine. The marquis handed his wife into their coach, then leaned in and said something to her. As Sebastian watched from the portico, his closest friend turned around again and approached him.
"Let"s take a stroll through the garden, Melbourne," Valentine said, gesturing.
"No. I don"t need any advice on extricating myself from female entanglements. Go home."
Valentine sighed. "Tell me this, then-at the moment your plan is to gain all the information you can and then present it to Prinny and the authorities in order to prevent innocent citizens from sailing off to their doom, yes?"
"A bit long-winded, but yes."
The marquis looked him straight in the eye. "They"ll hang her, you know. The princess."
Sebastian flinched, and he knew Valentine saw it. "If she is on our side, then I"ll do what I can to protect her from that."
"Ah. What you can. Within the bounds of propriety, I suppose. You"ll have quite the task making yourself look heroic and avoiding a scandal, as it is."
"That"s enough, Deverill."
"Just pointing out the obvious," Valentine returned easily. "Everyone knows you"ll do anything to avoid a scandal. That was why you publicly begged for her father"s permission to marry her once she threw herself on you, wasn"t it? Because declaring the lot of them thieves and frauds right then would have been what-completely reasonable and believable?"
"Just say what"s on your b.l.o.o.d.y mind and leave," Sebastian ground out, his fists clenching again. Yes, he"d been asking himself those same d.a.m.ned questions, and no, he didn"t know what the answer might be.
"I will say it, then, since you"re too d.a.m.ned stubborn. You like Josefina. My guess is that you like her more than you probably even realize."
"That"s enough."
"One scandal over four hundred years of Dukes of Melbourne," Valentine pressed, "and two thousand years of Griffins and Grifani and whatever else there was-I think your family name can stand up to it. Don"t blame your cowardice about following your heart on anything but yourself."
Sebastian hit him. He"d wanted to hit someone all evening-anything to focus his frustration. Deverill had just made himself the best target.
Valentine staggered, sweeping his leg around as he went down. Caught behind the knees, Sebastian fell backward. In a second he and Valentine were rolling on the sharp gravel of the drive.
An elbow slammed across his chin, and he tasted blood. Good. Fury, frustration, closed over him. His fist connected hard with Valentine"s ribcage, and the marquis grunted.
"Stop it!" Eleanor"s voice came. They both ignored it.
He couldn"t remember the last time he"d been in a physical fight; most, all, of his battles were verbal, wits and politics. This felt deeper, and far more satisfying.
"Stanton! a.s.sistance!"
Deverill"s sleeve tore off in his hand, and Sebastian threw it aside. Shoving hard, he got a knee underneath him and started to push to his feet. Abruptly cold water drenched his head and shoulders.
Sputtering, he released Valentine and rolled sideways. "Who the devil did that?" he roared, staggering to his feet.
Eleanor gripped a large bucket in both hands, Stanton beside her with another. Deverill stood and shook water out of his hair. "d.a.m.nation, Nell," he grumbled.
"And just what did that solve, you two?" Eleanor retorted, her expression cold but her hands shaking. "You said you were going to have a word with him, Valentine! For heaven"s sake!" She slammed down the bucket and stalked back to the coach.
Valentine rubbed his jaw, eyeing Sebastian. "Feel better?"
Drawing a deep breath, Sebastian motioned for Stanton to go back to the house. "Actually, yes," he said reluctantly. The fury that had boiled in his chest all night at least felt manageable, now.
"Good. I was running out of barbs to hurl at you." Squatting, the marquis retrieved his coat sleeve, then straightened again. "I"ll see you tomorrow."
"b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
"Fop."
Sebastian wiped his chin. "Blackguard."
"Nocky boy."
"Rakeshame."
"Stiff rump." With a quick grin Valentine returned to his coach and climbed in. A moment later the vehicle rumbled onto the street and turned for Corbett House.
Sebastian wrung out his coattails. Whatever his intention, Deverill had brought up several very good points. And he had something he needed to see to.
He returned to the house. "Stanton, have Green saddle Merlin. I need to change clothes, and then I"ll be going out. Don"t wait up." He pa.s.sed the butler, then stopped again. "And the next time you break into a fight of mine, I expect you to take my side, not try to stop it."
The butler softly closed the front door. "Yes, Your Grace."
He headed upstairs, shedding his coat as he went. Yes, Valentine had made a great deal of sense. The Griffin name could withstand a little out-and-out scandal. When it came down to it, could he? It seemed that over the next few days he would find out. Starting with tonight.
Josefina sat up in her large bed, a spread of correspondence around her. As she carefully reread all of the letters her father had ever sent her, it began to make sense. What she"d done was wrong; it always had been. But even when she knew they were scheming about something, even when she knew she was spinning untruths into even prettier lies, she enjoyed the way they immersed themselves in the fiction until it felt and looked real. And her father was so confident in his superiority that he could make it seem as though whoever fell for their plays deserved to be taken advantage of.
Her mother had always called him a dreamer, taking on one campaign, one war after another looking for fame or glory. As she read now, she could see the growing edge of desperation in his depiction of himself and his situation, the envy toward first Wellesley and then Bolivar and Rivera. Even toward her mother"s father, with his high position in the Spanish colonial government.
Was that what drove him? Envy? Or arrogance? She supposed it didn"t matter, and the thing she"d truly wanted to find somewhere in his correspondence-a conscience, a concern for anyone but himself-simply wasn"t there. Considering the various schemes with which she"d helped him over the years, she supposed she didn"t have a conscience, either. Or she"d thought not, anyway.
Two things had changed that. Previously their plans had been about money. Now, though, he wanted other people to risk their lives, and that was far different than encouraging them to part with a few quid. And then she"d met Sebastian Harold Griffin.
She should have hated him, she supposed. He was arrogant, and confident, and ridiculously mindful of propriety and the way his peers perceived him. But he"d also been lonely, and enticing, and he"d gotten angry when he"d suspected lies-not because they affected him, but because they affected the people of his country. His people, he"d said, and she understood that he felt a genuine responsibility toward them and for them.
Josefina took a slow breath. So now she knew. And tonight she had saved Sebastian"s life, not to protect her father"s plans, but for herself. It was fitting, she supposed, that however it turned out, neither man would ever forgive her for choosing that particular route. She didn"t know why she had, except that it seemed the one declaration sure to give her father pause. And maybe she"d done it because ten minutes earlier Sebastian had said he never wanted to set eyes on her again, and now he had do.
Her half-open window slid up. She gasped, diving off the far side of the bed and scrambling for the pistol in the bed stand. Letters went flying everywhere. Fumbling, her legs tangling in sheets and her night rail, she yanked open the drawer. "Go away," she hissed, "or I will shoot."
"I"m not going away," Sebastian"s low voice came, "so either shoot me or put that blasted thing away."
She gripped the pistol as he climbed with absurd grace over the window sill and into the room. Brushing off his coat, he closed the window again before he looked at her.
"I never imagined you as the climbing the trellis sort," she said.
"That was my second one," he returned. "And hopefully the last. Since you did go to the trouble of saving my life earlier, I would hope that you don"t actually intend to use that." He gestured at the pistol.
"That depends on why you"re here. We didn"t part on the best of terms."
"I"m here to talk. I need some answers before tomorrow." He tilted his head, his gaze in the candlelight taking in her bare feet and arms, and lingering at the purple mark above her right elbow. "I apologize for that," he said in a low voice. "I have no excuse."
Josefina wasn"t so certain about that. Still, if he"d given her the advantage, she meant to keep it. "I accept your apology," she said in her most regal voice. "What happened to your lip?"
"A disagreement," he returned, touching the bruise that overran the left corner of his mouth.
Swallowing, she placed the pistol back in the drawer and closed it away. "This has become complicated, hasn"t it?" Keeping her gaze and all her attention on him, she bent sideways to finish untangling her right foot from the bed sheets.
"Yes, it has."
"I hope-did you talk to Peep? I don"t want her to be hurt by all of this." Lady Penelope Griffin was such a sweet girl; it didn"t seem like more than a day or two ago that Josefina had felt that confident about her own place in the world.
Sebastian nodded. "I don"t think she quite understands it, but then neither do I."
"How will you get out of it? Marrying me, I mean." It would probably include her arrest and hanging, but she wanted to hear him say it. Hearing him condemn her would make her own decisions easier.
Steely gray eyes met hers. "I don"t know yet. My actions will depend on yours, I suppose."
She glanced at the empty bed between them, and l.u.s.t swept through her like a warm breeze. "I a.s.sume that means you want something of me. I may be a bit mercenary, Melbourne, but there are some things I won"t do."
"I"m rea.s.sured to hear that. Come here."
"No. You come here."
He regarded her in silence. Low heat spread through her, catching her breath and making her heart skitter. In brief moments of insanity she could imagine what it would be like to be married to this man-to be a princess, a real princess, every day for the rest of her life, to walk into a room on his arm, to always have that look he gave her now, only for her. She shivered.
"My question to you," he said finally, "is where you stand in this. And I"m sorry, but you do have to choose."
"Between you and my father?" she countered. "That"s not much of a choice, Melbourne, to either betray him or be used and abandoned by you. Or is your plan to whisk me away from danger, to find me employment somewhere in the country, perhaps as a governess? I should make a splendid governess, don"t you think?"
"I can protect you, Josefina."
"Once the people who"ve dance with me, invited me to their homes, flattered me, courted me-once they learn what"s happened, who I really am, they will never speak to me again. I"m destroyed either way, Sebastian. And no, I"m not blaming you. I went along with this, and it"s on my head. But I do know where reality lies."
Sebastian walked around the foot of the disheveled bed and stopped just in front of her. "You do know where reality lies," he agreed quietly, touching her chin with his fingers and tilting her head up to look her in the eye. "Are you going to help me put a stop to the fiction?"
"I will not help see my father hanged." A tear ran down her face. He wiped it away with his thumb. "I can"t do that."
He leaned down and kissed her. Sebastian told himself he"d gone to see her tonight because he wanted answers; the truth was, he wanted her even more. Every bit of her aroused him. Even the way she refused to cooperate and make the situation easier for him. Everyone else cooperated with him-it was in their best interest to do so. It could be in hers, as well-enough people owed him favors or money that he could keep her from prison. She was right about one thing, though; Society would never forgive being made to look foolish. Later, he told himself. He would make things right later.
"This won"t change anything," Josefina breathed as she pushed the coat from his shoulders.
"It"s already changed everything." Sebastian slipped his fingers beneath the thin straps of material at her shoulders and drew them down her arms. Even her skin intoxicated him; smooth, soft, and warm, remembered and new at the same time. Her scent was different than Charlotte"s, lilac rather than summer roses. He was glad of that, though it didn"t take perfume to make him aware of the differences between Charlotte and Josefina.
He kissed her again, trailing his hands down her bare back to her hips and pulling her closer against him. Josefina was a trickster, an actress, and only in the past few days had he begun to realize that she had a conscience, and a heart. She"d risked a great deal, telling him what she had. And she was the key to the rest of it, if he could discover a way to resolve this without forcing her to do what she would otherwise refuse. It had recently become essential not to lose her. How long would he have been able to keep his vow of being rid of her? A day? A week? He"d lasted four hours.
"Sebastian," she moaned, pushing at him.
He took a half step back, and she reached between them to unb.u.t.ton his waistcoat. It followed his coat to the floor, his cravat going after. When he ran his fingers lightly across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her nipples pebbled. Taking a shuddering breath, he bent down, replacing his fingers with his tongue.
Josefina reached down his back and tugged his shirt free of his trousers. He broke contact with her b.r.e.a.s.t.s only long enough to pull the shirt off over his head. The last time he"d been in this room with her, he"d ended with his boots on and his trousers around his knees. Tonight they had hours, and he intended to use them.
At the back of his mind he could acknowledge that this could be his last night with her, his last time to touch her, kiss her, take her. What he wanted was to give her so much pleasure, make her desire for him so overpowering, that he would finally be able to sway her to listen to his logic.
He teased at her with his tongue, with gentle nips of his teeth, and she gave a shuddering moan in response. Arousal tugged hard at him, but he resisted the urge to simply push her down on the bed and mount her like an animal. After four years of abstinence, by choice or not, being with Josefina made him feel as though he"d come to life again.
Releasing her, he sat on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots. Josefina swept around behind him, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressing against his back as she slid her arms down his shoulders and kissed the nape of his neck. Briefly he reflected that if they could simply remain in bed, they would have no problems whatsoever.
The logical, reserved part of himself began to submerge into the bliss of pure sensation. It was more than that, though. If all he"d required was an offer of s.e.x, there were myriad women who wouldn"t have hesitated to climb into his bed.
"You know," she murmured, "being with you is bad for me."
He looked over his shoulder at her. "Is it?"
"Oh, yes. I would be risking much less if you were a shopkeeper or a banker." She pulled on his shoulders, putting him flat on his back to look up at her. "And I imagine I am equally bad for you."
"In all the time you"ve been privy to your father"s...plans," he whispered, pulling her down over him to kiss her again, "how is it that until a few days ago you remained a virgin?"
Her lips smiled against his. "Perhaps I was waiting for you."
Frowning, Sebastian rolled onto his stomach, ignoring the discomfort to his c.o.c.k. "I"m already here, Josefina. And for G.o.d"s sake, I hear enough empty flattery every time I set foot out-of-doors to last me a lifetime. I asked a question. Pray either answer it truthfully, or decline to answer it at all."
Deep brown eyes a.s.sessed him. "My father has always had a very high opinion of himself," she said, sliding down on her hands and knees until she lay on her stomach facing him, just inches away. "Because of that, he insisted that everyone else also have a high opinion of him, and of his family. I had very good tutors and governesses, and an exceptional education. And since you want honesty, I wasn"t about to risk throwing away my...potential by falling into bed with a soldier or a tobacco farmer."
"But I was worth the risk?" he countered, pulling her hand to him and sliding her forefinger into his mouth.
He felt her responding shiver. "That remains to be seen," she returned. "But I do enjoy being in your company more than anyone else"s I can recall."
Sebastian was not going to logic himself out of having her. Swiftly he sat up again to remove his second boot and unfasten his trousers. Pushing them down, he kicked out of them. "I didn"t think I liked surprises any longer," he said, putting a hand on the small of her back when she would have turned over. "You have proven me wrong."
Slowly he ran his palms from her shoulders down her back, pausing at her round bottom, and then down her thighs and past her knees to the soles of her feet. Whatever it was about her that drew him, he liked it. He liked thinking as a man rather than as a duke with a world of duties and responsibilities. He liked the challenge of deciphering the twists and turns of her mind, and sinking into the soft curves of her body.
As he ran his mouth back up in the same manner she squirmed, moaning again. "Sebastian, stop teasing."
"Does it feel good?"