Unmasked

Nick nodded. “Of course. I—” He stopped abruptly.

The front door had opened and two late guests, both female, were being ushered into the hall by a deferential footman. One was a beauty of maybe seven or eight and twenty. She could command a room. As imperious in her own way as Faye Cole, the arrogant tilt of her blond head demanded that everyone should look at her and Nick thought that most men would be only too willing to comply. She was dressed in a shockingly low-cut ball gown of scarlet that barely covered her nipples and looked as though it had been dampened for good measure. Very bold, Nick thought, with all the goods in the shop window. He heard Charles sigh.

“That’s another of my cousins, I’m afraid, Lady Hester Berry. The perils of a large family…”

But Nick was not listening. He was looking at the other woman. She was hanging back behind Lady Hester and he could see from the way in which her gloved fingers gripped her evening bag that she was nervous. She looked younger than Lady Hester, a little pale, small but voluptuous, her hair covered by a fashionable turban, her body swathed in an expensively modest gown that nevertheless clung lovingly to every one of her curves.

Nick stared. He had seen those curves recently covered in no more than droplets of water.

She turned her head and met his gaze. He had thought that her eyes were black until the lamplight struck across them and he saw the flecks of green and gold in their depths. The recognition hit him then so hard and so fast that he almost lost his breath. It could not be a coincidence. Surely, surely this was the girl from the Hen and Vulture? She had been wearing a blond wig then, and a mask, but the one thing that she could not disguise was the unusual color of her eyes. He stared at her, admiring the curve of her cheek, the sensuous fullness of her lips—not stained a harlot’s cherry-red tonight but a tempting pale pink—and the vulnerable line of her neck. He was almost certain—as sure as he could be without kissing her—that it was the same woman.

Her gaze widened slightly as it met his and he knew in that moment that she had recognized him, too, though whether as the man she had kissed in the tavern or as the man by the pool—or both—he could not be sure. He watched her and waited coolly for her reaction.

It was not long in coming. She raised her chin and gave him the most perfectly calculated cut-direct that he had ever experienced. She looked through him as though he simply did not exist.

Nick’s lips twisted with appreciation. She was a very cool customer indeed.

But could this oh-so-proper lady truly be the notorious Glory, the harlot from the tavern? She was certainly the naked nymph from the fountain.

And he had the advantage. His sudden appearance must inevitably have shocked her, no matter how well she concealed it. So now was the time to make a move before she had the chance to rally her defenses.

“Who is that?” he murmured, and heard Charles sigh again.

“I told you, old fellow, that is my cousin Hester—”

“No,” Nick said. “The other lady.”

“Oh.” Charles sounded taken aback, as though no one should be able to see another female in the room when Hester was there to dazzle. “That is Mrs. Marina Osborne. She is a neighbor of ours.”

Mrs. Osborne. Nick’s eyes narrowed. She sounded extraordinarily respectable.

“She’s married?” he asked.

“No.” Charles sounded wearily amused, as though Nick was not the first person to ask. “She is a widow—a rich and most devoted widow. They say she buried her heart with her late husband.”

Nick smiled. A rich widow. What a perfect cover for the questionable Mrs. Osborne. She had a husband to lend his name and respectability but, conveniently, not his presence.

“They always say that about apparently virtuous widows,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s true,” Charles said. “You are a cynic, my friend. And you have absolutely no chance whatsoever if you are planning to fix your interest there. She is reputedly as cold as ice.”

Nick thought once again of the tempting beauty of Marina Osborne as the drops of water caressed her naked body.

“We’ll see,” he said. He straightened his shoulders. “Introduce me.”

CHAPTER THREE

Indian Jasmine—Attraction

“THE MOST GORGEOUS MAN in the room is staring at you, Mari,” Lady Hester Berry whispered. “I do believe he intends to make your acquaintance.”

Mari knew. The second she had entered the hall she had been aware of the man standing to Charles Cole’s right. She had been conscious of every gesture he made, every glance in her direction. She had seen him look at Hester, then look at her, and then—extraordinarily—continue to hold her gaze as though no one else in the room existed.

Such a thing had never happened to Mari before. One of the many reasons she loved having Hester as a companion was that Hester was the most perfect camouflage. Mari was accustomed to being looked through, over and around by men who were searching the room for Hester. She welcomed it. That was not to say she had no suitors of her own. There were plenty who admired her fortune if not her person. But she was mainly accustomed to men trying to charm her solely so that she would speak well of them to her friend.

This dark stranger broke every rule. He had looked at Hester and then he had looked at her and he had not looked away again. In that moment Mari had known, instinctively, since she had not seen him clearly, that he had been the man beneath the willow tree in the garden and that he had recognized her as the naked nymph swimming in the fountain.

A second later, as he stepped into the light, she had also known—with a certainty that made her heart drop to her satin slippers—that he had also been the man in the tavern in London the night that Rashleigh had been killed. He was the man that she had picked up whilst she had waited for Rashleigh to come, the man she had kissed.

He looked different, of course. That night he had been dressed somewhat ambiguously. Yet she had sensed as soon as she had seen him that it was a disguise rather than his true persona, for there was something hard, intense and entirely masculine about him that he had not been able to disguise. It was something that, to her shock, had called to all that was feminine in her.

She shivered beneath the folds of her silver shawl and drew it a little closer around her. The kiss had been a mistake. An aberration. Normally she hated kissing. It disgusted her. She seldom even touched another person. Such closeness made her fearful. Which made it even more extraordinary that she had forgotten all her own rules when she had kissed this particular man.

She had spent the months since meeting him trying, unsuccessfully, to forget the kiss, to forget him. When Rashleigh had appointed the Hen and Vulture as their meeting place she had known she could not sweep in wearing her widow’s weeds if she wished to remain inconspicuous. So she had chosen Molly’s fetching disguise but as soon as she had arrived at the club she had realized her peril when a drunken dandy had tried to pick her up. She had looked around the club for another man whom she might use as decoy, as protector, and her gaze had fallen on him. But as their conversation had progressed she had realized she had a tiger by the tail.

There had been something about him that had intrigued her, attracted her. She had never felt like that before in her whole life and it had been heady, like a draught of the strongest wine, tempting her, calling to her wild side. A part of her had been incredulous and disbelieving that after the way Rashleigh had treated her she could ever feel like this, and it lured her into further indiscretion. When he had leaned in to kiss her she had panicked for a moment, afraid that she would feel all the revulsion that she had felt for Rashleigh, her skin crawling, the fear threatening to close her throat. But it had passed in an instant and instead of disgust she had felt a sensation that was sweet and strong, sweeping her past hesitation. She had brought his lips down to hers, led by instinct, wanting to explore the taste and texture of him. The quick rush of desire that had flooded her had taken her by surprise and, when she withdrew from him, she had seen the echo of that passion and that surprise in his eyes, too, and her world had reeled.

He was a dangerous man, a man who could almost make her forget the past. She had thought that she would never see him again, that she could forget what had happened between them. She had been wrong.

And now it seemed he was dangerous for another reason. He had been at the Hen and Vulture the night Rashleigh was murdered and he was here now, and that could be no coincidence.

Mari raised her chin and very deliberately broke the eye contact between them.

“He is not so handsome,” she said now to Hester. “His nose has been broken in the past and has not set straight. And I prefer fair hair to brown.” Even so, there was little to fault in his appearance, and she knew it. He had very straight, dark brows above equally dark watchful eyes, cheekbones and a jawline that looked as hard as rock and a very firm mouth. Mari remembered that mouth with a little shiver of recollection.

“Nonsense,” Hester was saying. “You are too particular. He looks—”

“Tough,” Mari said, with another shiver.

“Yes,” Hester allowed. “Very direct.” She smiled. “He is not for me, I think. But I do believe that he is the most handsome man I have seen in Peacock Oak these two years past.”

“Peacock Oak being well-known as a center of excellence for masculine beauty,” Mari said.

Hester gave her a flashing smile. “I will allow you to be an expert in matters botanical, Mari, but not in matters pertaining to the opposite sex. There, I think, you must bow to my superior knowledge.”

“Your extensive knowledge,” Mari agreed.

Hester gave her a tiny kick with her slippered foot. “Here they come,” she said. “He must have asked Charles for an introduction.”

“Then he cannot take a hint,” Mari said. Her heart had started to beat a little faster now despite her outward calm. “I just cut him dead.”

“Must you do things like that?” Hester asked. “I wish to meet him even if you do not.”

“I fear I have to cut him,” Mari murmured. “He was the one I told you about earlier. The one who was watching me in the fountain.”

Hester clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh! No wonder he was staring!”

“And,” Mari continued, “I am almost certain that he is also the man I met in London.”

Hester looked at her blankly and she spelled out, “The one at the Hen and Vulture, Hes, the night that Rashleigh was killed.”

All the color fled Hester’s face, leaving her pale beneath her paint. “Damnation,” she breathed. “Can it be a coincidence?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Mari said bleakly.

Hester bit her lip. “Is it too late to run away, do you think?”

“I fear so,” Mari said. She looked thoughtfully at the purposeful figure advancing toward her. “I suspect that if I did,” she said, “he is the sort of man who would run after me. And catch me.”

“Then what are we to do?” Hester whispered. She still looked very pale. “I am hopeless at dissembling—”

“Then don’t try. Leave it to me.”

Charles Cole was bowing before them. Mari dropped a demure curtsy. She had always kept her distance from the Duke who was more, she was sure, than simply the easygoing country squire he pretended to be. Having her own secrets to keep made her more sensitive to the deceptions of others, though she was not sure exactly what Charles Cole’s secret was.

Hester offered her cousin a cheek to kiss. “Good evening, Charles,” she said. Mari could tell that despite her nervousness, she was making strenuous efforts to behave normally and she felt a rush of affection for her friend. Hester had insisted on accompanying her to London on the dreadful journey to confront Rashleigh. She had waited for her at Grillons Hotel. Mari had told her everything that had happened that night, for they always shared all their secrets. But now, for the first time, she was wishing that there were some things she had kept from Hester, too, so that her friend should not feel this terrible pressure to protect her. Mari had looked after herself before when there had been no one else to care for her. She could do it again if she had to. She did not want Hester to suffer for her past.

“Good evening, Hester,” Charles said, making sterling efforts not to look down the front of Hester’s dress where her bosom rather flaunted itself. He bowed more formally to Mari. “Mrs. Osborne.”

“Your grace.” Mari tried not to look at Charles’s companion and failed singularly. She could feel the weight of his glance on her like a physical touch, and when she raised her eyes, there was a look in his that made her heart jolt and delicious shivers run along her skin. His glance on her was hard, appraising. She felt a heat start to burn deep in her stomach and was shocked. She had thought that Rashleigh had taught her all about men, all about their baser instincts and how far they would go to indulge them. When she had run from him, she had run from the desire ever to have an intimate relationship with a man again. She had thought never to want to. Yet this man had overturned those certainties before with just one kiss and now he was doing the same with one look.

She reminded herself sternly that he must be here with a purpose and that she could not afford to drop her guard for a moment. Her attraction to him could only weaken her. It made her vulnerable to him and that she could not permit.

“May I introduce Major Nicholas Falconer,” Charles Cole was saying smoothly. “He is an old friend of mine come to spend the summer in the country. Nick, my cousin Lady Hester Berry and a friend of ours, Mrs. Osborne.”

Nicholas Falconer. He sounded safe enough and he bowed to Mari with scrupulous courtesy. But when he took her hand in his, his touch felt dangerous. It also felt shockingly familiar on the basis of just one kiss.

“How do you do, Major Falconer?” Mari made her voice as colorless as possible.

“I am very well, thank you, Mrs. Osborne,” Nick Falconer said. He took her arm and drew her a little away from Charles and Hester. He did it with supreme confidence and an absolute determination to separate her from their companions. It had happened before Mari had even realized what he was about.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Osborne,” Nick Falconer said, “but have we met before?”

Mari met his gaze. It was dark and direct. Suddenly she felt quite cut off from everyone but Nick himself, for his broad shoulders blocked out Hester and Charles and all the other guests. He had drawn a little closer to her as a group of people passed by, chattering and laughing, on their way to the refreshment room. One of his hands was holding her elbow, lightly, but with a touch that made her entire body tingle with awareness. She could smell the scent of him, a combination of summer nights, sandalwood cologne and something more personal and intimate. His clothes were creased and dusty from his journey but that did not detract one whit from his air of authority. Here was a man accustomed to taking what he wanted. She could tell. She doubted that many women would refuse him.

The awareness shivered between them, intense, compulsive. It felt as though he was conscious of every inch of her beneath the gray silk of her evening dress. Mari broke the contact only with difficulty.

“I am sure that we have never met,” she said.

He gave her the same slow smile that she remembered from that night at the tavern. “Would you have remembered me?”

Definitely. I could not forget you….

“I have a good memory,” Mari said coolly, “but you do not feature in it.”

He raised an eyebrow, completely unmoved at her set down. “Strange. You seem very familiar to me.”

Mari gave him a cold smile. “On the contrary, Major Falconer, you are the one who is overfamiliar—and not very original in your approach, either.”

He smiled again. It was devastating. “And yet for all your denials I am certain that I recognize you,” he said, “although you do look very different with your clothes on.”

Mari could feel herself clutching her reticule so tightly that the catch bit into her fingers. So he was going to be that direct. Not many men would be so blunt but she might have known that he would waste no time on courtesies. She knew he was deliberately provoking her, testing her to see what her reaction would be. No respectable woman, after all, would admit to swimming in the nude in a garden fountain. So if she did admit it, it would be tantamount to confessing that she was of easy virtue and then, well, judging by the look in his eyes, it would not be her planting schemes he would be interested in discussing…

Damn it all to hell and back. She admitted to herself that he had her trapped. What was to be done? It could be the ruin of her reputation if he spoke out about what he had seen. On the other hand, her indiscretion in the garden was not as damaging as those other, life-threatening secrets that she absolutely had to keep. She could admit to being the woman in the fountain but never, ever to being the harlot at the Hen and Vulture.

“I know it was you in the fountain,” he said softly, whilst her trapped mind ran back and forth over the possibilities. “You may protest if you wish but I believe I would recognize you anywhere.”

A shiver ran along Mari’s nerves and she drew the silver shawl more tightly around her shoulders. Oh, yes, he recognized her from the gardens but did he know her from the tavern, as well? It felt as though they were already deeply involved in a game of hunter and hunted and any admission she made could be so very dangerous.

Challenge him. See how far he will go, what he will give away….

She had always been a gambler. She had had to be in order to survive. Sometimes to throw down the gauntlet was the only way.

She gave a little shrug. “Very well. I concede that I was the woman you saw in the fountain. I thought I was unobserved. It was…careless of me.”

He flashed her another smile, a disturbingly attractive one. Her toes curled instinctively within her slippers and her heart did another giddy little skip as though she was a schoolroom miss developing a tendre rather than a mature woman of five and twenty.

“I like it that you do not pretend,” he said. His voice was intimately low. “Ninety-nine women out of one hundred would have claimed not to understand me.”

If only he knew. Sometimes she forgot where the pretence began—and where it ended.

She gave him a very straight look. “Of course they would, and who could blame them? A reputation dies all too easily, as you must know, Major Falconer.”

“So why are you different? Why did you admit it?”

Mari met his quizzical dark gaze and felt a little breathless. “I am not different. I do not wish you to be the ruin of my reputation, Major Falconer. But equally, I know that you saw me, so what can I say?” She spread her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I was bathing. You saw me. It would avail me little to pretend otherwise. So I must rely on your behavior as a gentleman and hope you will not speak out.”

It was not the whole story, of course. It would be impossible to tell him the truth, that sometimes the role of the respectable widow grated on her and she felt an impossible desire to be free. She could not tell him that it was this impulse that had led her to strip off her clothes and revel in the fresh coldness of the fountain. That was too intimate a thing to confide to a virtual stranger, a dangerous stranger who already saw far more than she wished.

When he remained silent, watching her face, she raised her brows. “Was that all you wished to say to me, Major Falconer?”

She saw his lips twitch into a smile at her attempted dismissal of him.

“No, it was not all.” He reached forward. His fingers brushed against her neck very lightly and lingered, warm against her skin. “You had better hide that curl if you do not wish anyone else to guess your secret. Your hair is still wet. You must have rushed home and dressed in a great hurry.”

Mari’s hand flew to her neck where the wayward curl of hair nestled against her throat. It felt feathery, soft and damp, drying from the warmth of her body. She pushed it beneath the edge of her turban, her fingers suddenly clumsy. She could feel the color suffuse her face as Nick continued to watch her.

“Hair as black as midnight,” he said. “I remember.”

There was a heat in the pit of Mari’s stomach as she thought of what else he might remember about her. Her whole body felt as though it was on fire. But then the memory of Rashleigh—his violence, his touch—slithered into her mind and turned her blood to shards of ice and this time she could not erase it.

Not all men were cruel like the Earl of Rashleigh had been. She knew that. She knew that some were all that was chivalrous and honorable. But she had no desire to find out for herself which were good and which were not. She could never trust a man; never let him close to her, and this man least of all when he could bring them all down. So she had to put an end to this disturbing attraction now. She had to finish matters before they really began.

“I have to ask you to forget everything that you saw, sir,” she said coldly, “and never speak of this again.” Indignation swept through her and she could not quite stifle it. “Indeed,” she said, “if you had any claim to the title of gentleman, you would not have been watching anyway.”

She saw the laughter lines around his eyes deepen and felt a strange tug of feeling inside. “My dear Mrs. Osborne,” he sounded amused, “you ask too much. I am a man first and a gentleman second.”

“A very long way second!”

He inclined his head as though conceding the point. He took her hand again, drawing her close. His breath tickled her ear. The icy feeling that was wedged beneath Mari’s heart threatened to melt in the heat of his touch.

“You are a widow, Mrs. Osborne,” he said softly, “and as such, I assume, you are familiar with the way a man thinks on such matters as—” his voice dropped further “—physical desire?”

Mari repressed a shiver. Oh, yes, she knew all about the way a man thought about lust. Rashleigh had taught her more degrading things than she ever wanted to remember. She looked down her nose at him.

“The thought processes of a man on such subjects are scarcely complex,” she said coldly.

Nick laughed. “Quite so. Then you may imagine how I felt on seeing you naked and soaking wet with the water cascading over your body and the droplets catching the last of the light—”

Her whole body suffused with blistering heat, Mari wrenched her hand from his. “Major Falconer!”

“Call me Nicholas. Or Nick, if you prefer, since we already know one another so well and are likely to know each other even better.”

“Major Falconer,” Mari repeated, “you are remarkably—indeed, distressingly—obtuse. I have no interest in encouraging your attentions to me. I am a respectable widow.”

“All appearances to the contrary, Mrs. Osborne,” Nick interrupted smoothly.

Mari stared at him. He was right, of course. No woman who displayed herself so wantonly in public could possibly claim the right to modesty. It was the richest irony that she had allowed herself to swim only because she was certain she was alone and now it turned out that the one man in the entire kingdom whom she would wish never to meet again had been the one man standing watching her.

“If you are looking for a lover—” Nick began.

Mari’s temper snapped. “Major Falconer, I am not! I must ask you to desist from speaking of such matters! As for what you saw in the gardens, you will desist from even thinking about it—” She broke off as Nick shook his head.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Osborne. I give you my word that I will tell no one of what I saw, but you cannot ask me to forget.” He smiled. “You cannot erase my memories.”