Pride & Passion

“Cream or sugar?”

“Just black, if you please.”

With a nod, the servant was on his way, leaving them alone.

“Devil of a headache, I take it, then?” Black asked as he raised his own cup to his lips.

“Devil? And a few more metaphors that aren’t fit for priggish ears.” He gave Sussex a meaningful glance. Apparently he was the prig. The thought bristled, especially when he thought of Lucy and her accusations that he was a cold, boring aristocrat with no fire in his soul. What did the bloody pair of them know, anyway? His breast was on fire for want of her, and his soul … it was filled with an unholy lust that would never be satiated. Lucy Ashton would never discover for herself the amount of passion he kept hidden beneath his proper facade.

“You’re late.” His coffee cup hit the table with more force than he intended, but damn it, he was in something of a mood today, and could not shake it. One would think that after being shut out of Lucy’s life for the past two weeks, one would be somewhat more civil. Yet as each day passed he was becoming increasingly more intolerable—and short-tempered.

Alynwick, he surmised, must be used to his outbursts, because he merely raised his dark eyebrow and made a grand show of leisurely sipping away at his coffee. “You have pent-up lust, Sussex. Get yourself a woman. You’ll be right as rain after it, I swear it.”

As usual, Alynwick’s answer to everything was sex.

“I have no need of your solicitation, Alynwick.”

“No?” the marquis said with a grin. “Come now, Sussex, you’re a healthy male, living like a monk. It can’t be healthy.”

He didn’t need any reminders that he hadn’t bedded in a woman in … good God, months! Almost a year, he reminded himself. When Lucy Ashton and her flamered hair had flitted past him, robbing him of breath, speech and rational thought. She’d been a compulsion to him ever since, and every woman he’d seen or met since paled against her.

“Well?” he asked irritably, when he could no longer stomach the marquis’s antics, or his pitiful one-sided longing for Lucy. “What did you find out on this supposed reconnaissance mission of yours?”

Alynwick shrugged and crossed his leg over his knee, while his fingers fiddled with a loose thread on his sleeve. “That the new Lady Larabie has the mouth of a pinched fish, and her bosom, which has been much touted, is nothing but the sham of a rather imaginative, yet very hardworking corset.”

Groaning in frustration, Sussex sent a pleading glance to Black in hopes the earl could knock some sense into Alynwick. Everything was such a damned jest with him. He cared for nothing but frivolities and women, and to hell with anything else.

“Really?” Black drawled. “A feigned bosom? Poor Larabie. To be drawn in and duped by an artfully arranged décolletage.”

“Hang Larabie, and bosoms,” Sussex snarled. Alynwick, with that devil’s twinkle in his eye, slunk deeper into his chair and stared at him.

“Bosoms, Sussex, are the sustenance of the world. How can you not be a devoted follower? I myself find I can be led quite merrily about by a fine pair of—”

“Alynwick …” he warned.

“Is this strange aversion of yours to the discussion of breasts in particular, or is it because the ravishing Lady Lucy has but a rather modest bosom?”

“You ass!” he hissed, and jumped up from his chair with his hand fisted, and his arm pulled back, ready to plant a facer on the marquis. Laughing, Alynwick held up his hands pleading with mock horror.

“My God, you’re like a baited bear. Sit, you oaf, before you spill my coffee. I swear you’ve lost your sense of humor. This girl has all but sucked it out of you—well, not sucked per se—”

“Watch your tongue,” Sussex growled in a deep voice, “or I’ll pull it out of your mouth for you.”

“My, such a strong reaction. I see you’re still moonfaced over the girl. Disgusting what love does to a perfectly healthy and virile man. And what are you smiling about over there?” Alynwick asked, making Black’s grin vanish. “You’re no better, the way you’ve been barricaded in your town house with your new wife.”

“Mmm, yes, and if you dare say anything about my wife’s bosom, I will flatten you right here. Understood?”

“Good Lord, I’m surrounded by prigs.”

“You’ll be surrounded by a pool of blood—your own—if you don’t get on with it, Alynwick,” Sussex growled. He was in no mood for this type of banter before, and he certainly wasn’t now. How dare Alynwick have sized up Lucy, and found her lacking? Damn the man, she had a perfectly lovely bosom, and he should know, he’d spent months staring at it, and wondering how perfect her breasts were beneath her tight-fitting bodices, and if her nipples were coral or pale pink, and how they might tighten with the graze of his thumb, the tip of his tongue …

God, he was unraveling. The sooner he could quit the conversation, the better. Alynwick had always been a terrible influence on him.

“Once more, Alynwick. What was it you discovered?”

With a sigh, the marquis shoved away his irreverence, and fortified himself with another large gulp of hot coffee. Wincing at the bitterness, he set it down. “False bosom aside, Lady Larabie has a surprisingly naughty nature. Between heated kisses in the hall, she invited me to join her at a special Wednesday nightclub. Any guesses what it might be?”

Black pressed forward. “The hell she did!”

Alynwick grinned. “I keep telling you, Black, it’s the sweet, innocent-looking ones that are really hellcats in the bedroom. Yes. It’s true. The new Lady Larabie slips out on Wednesday evenings when her husband is gambling with his cronies. She’s been going to the House of Orpheus for weeks, and she’s offered to drag me along.”

“In exchange for what?” Sussex demanded.

Alynwick looked at him as though he were sporting two heads. “Dear me, your grace, has it really been that long?”

Sussex felt his face flame. “You do not need to sell your soul for this, Alynwick—we can get information about Orpheus in other ways.”

“Kind of you to think of my soul, Sussex, but I assure you, I sold the thing years ago. It was of no use to me. I gave it to the devil in a two-for-one bargain, my soul and conscience for a tidy little abode in his realm when I expire.”

To hear him say such things in such a cavalier tone chilled him to the core. Was there nothing Alynwick held sacred?

“So, you will carry on an affair with Lady Larabie in order to gain entrance into this mysterious House of Orpheus?”

“A little more than just an entrée, my friends. I intend to be introduced to this shadowy Orpheus, thanks to the lady’s generosity.”

Black sat back and studied the marquis. “And if Larabie takes it into his head to pursue his wife’s activities?”

Alynwick shrugged. “He won’t. We’re going to settle it tonight in a duel. I’ll need a second, of course, and then it will be all over and done, and his lordship can have his peace of mind that he has fought for his lady’s virtue. His honor will be placated, and he’ll be too arrogant to believe that the lady would continue to carry on with me behind his back. And then, every Wednesday night thereafter we will meet and I will try my damnedest to find out what I can about Orpheus, and how the devil he discovered anything about the Brethren Guardians.”

“You’re insane. A duel with Larabie? You’ll get yourself shot—and most likely killed,” he snapped. “Especially since you cannot seem to pass away a night without getting roaring drunk.”

“I do not need a cataloguing of my sins, Sussex. Believe me, I’m well aware of them all. Trust me. I know what I’m doing, and this plan will work. Lady Larabie is entirely indiscreet. I’ll have her spilling what she knows about the club and about Orpheus himself within a week. There is nothing else to be done. Wendell Knighton did not act alone in his attempt to steal the artifacts—there was someone else pulling the strings, feeding him information. We cannot just let it rest now the relics are safe and Knighton is dead.”

“You’re right, of course. We need to follow the leads we have, and every single one of them return to this Orpheus fellow.”

“I trust neither one of you have a better plan to find him?”

“No,” Sussex grumbled.

Alynwick was many things, a dissolute roué, an amoral, unfeeling clod, but he was on their side, and he always, always kept his word. His oath to the Brethren Guardians would never be broken, Sussex knew that much. He also could not fathom a guess of what price this mad scheme was going to cost Alynwick.

“This is most dangerous,” Black murmured, “but the fact is, we really have no other recourse. Orpheus has withdrawn into the ethers of London since Knighton’s murder, and we can’t afford to have any more lost time. We need to find him. What really matters is, this Orpheus knows about us, and we can’t have that—we must ascertain how he discovered our existence, and those of the artifacts.”

True. Sussex hated to admit it, but at this moment Orpheus had the upper hand. There was no telling what he might do with the knowledge he had gained of their order, or when he might decide to strike again and attempt to steal the relics—or worse, expose them and what they hid to the world. Orpheus needed to be stopped, and they had no other way, or information.

“All right. It’s settled then. Tonight, you and Black will go to the Masonic meeting, I’ll get ripping drunk and meet you at Grantham Farm, where one of you will be my second. I’ll say that I ran into one of you, and that my usual set was too drunk to be of any assistance. It shouldn’t raise too many questions, especially with one of you doing the honors. Everyone knows you won’t gossip about it. Should be all right, I’d think.”

Black shook his head. “I don’t like this. Anything could happen, especially with Larabie. The man is a fool, and with a woman’s involvement, he’s likely to be even more foolhardy than usual.”

“We’re all fools in love, aren’t we?” Alynwick drawled, and Sussex glared at his friend as the marquis’s amused grin focused on him.

Yes, he was a fool in love. He’d already tried to wrangle his way out of it, but Lucy Ashton had an unholy grip on his heart. She would not let go, and he didn’t think he could let her, even knowing that she loved another. That was the damnable thing. If it were only lust he felt for her, this entire debacle would be behind him. But it wasn’t simply a case of desire, but love. Or at the very least the stirrings of a true and abiding love. How he wished he could get her alone and discover her, the true woman she was. Not the society miss she pretended to be, but the woman she hid from the world. But there was little chance for that now. She’d made it perfectly clear that she loathed the very sight of him.

“Well, then, I think I’ll be off. I need a new waistcoat. Something dashing and debonair, something befitting the field of honor.”

“Wait, I have news. We have a new ally.”

“Do we?” Alynwick drawled. “How did this come about?”

“Elizabeth.”

Alynwick frowned. “I don’t see how your sister can be of any use to us.”

“She is going to discover what Lucy knows about Orpheus and the club.”

“And how would Lady Lucy know anything about such matters?” Alynwick asked through narrowed eyes. “Damn it, Sussex, you’re a liability around that girl.”

“It’s a private matter, Alynwick. All you need know is that Lucy Ashton does indeed have some involvement that goes beyond her knowledge of the pendant. The particulars of which are of no concern to you.”

“Bah,” he grunted with a wave of his hand. “Elizabeth would never betray a friend. Whatever Lucy Ashton tells her will remain with Elizabeth until her dying day. I would not wait about with bated breath to discover what Elizabeth learns from Lucy.”

“Lizzy is concerned enough about Lucy to share what she discovers. Even now they are at Sussex House discussing matters. I have no doubt that Elizabeth will be able to discover what we need to know.”

“No doubt. Your sister has the unnatural ability to discover one’s most carefully hidden secret, doesn’t she? I wonder how she’ll accomplish it, making Lucy part with her secrets?”

“The way females always do,” he answered. “By telling her one of her own secrets.”

The loss of color in Alynwick’s face was comical, and puzzling. So was the way he jumped up from the chair and left as though the devil were on his heels.

“Secrets,” Black murmured as he reached for his hat. “Damnable things aren’t they?”

Black didn’t know the half of it, Sussex thought, or the secrets he harbored. God help him if the world was to learn his. It would ruin everything.

IN THE SHADOWS, Orpheus waited—and plotted his revenge—a retribution that would be beautiful and painful. Much like that of a spider’s web—an intricate, glittering thing of exquisite beauty, but treacherous, offering a slow, suffocating death to those caught in its silken tendrils.

His web was no less complex, or less beautiful, but it was infinitely more dangerous. And the Brethren Guardians … well, they were wrapping themselves into the delicate silken weaves, just as he had planned. Soon, they would be cocooned, and their little group and the ancient artifacts they hid from the world would be his.

There was no stopping him, not even death could, for he had seen death and had battled his way back from its grip. There was nothing left now but to succeed, to lure and entice and destroy the three men who had destroyed him and everything he might have been.

But a spider is a clever thing, and constructs his web in a most abstruse manner. And while he was busily lying in wait for his prey to draw to his web, he needed something else—a bait of sorts—to lay upon the silk to lure the Guardian he wanted most.

He watched this victim from the dark corners of his club—his house—the House of Orpheus. She was the adhesive his web needed to draw and hold his enemies. She was the one he could so easily entice into his silken world of mystery, beauty and forbidden passion. She was the next step in his plan.

He signaled his accomplice across the room, who moved through the crowd with predatory grace, compelled by the same soul-destroying need for vengeance that ruled him.

“It is time to be resurrected,” Orpheus murmured, and his minion’s breath stilled for a fraction of a second, then resumed with heat and excitement. Yes, this man had waited so long—so many months for this very moment. Now that it had arrived, Orpheus could sense the taut strength, the scent of bloodlust that suddenly rushed free from within the cold confines of his subordinate’s soul, which was consigned to hell—just as his was. “Do what you must, but bring her to me.”

“As you wish, Orpheus. It shall be done. But what of the pendant and the chalice?”

Anger seethed through him, and his body vibrated with the barely controlled shaking of that rage. Damn Wendell Knighton! The man had proved to be useless, and selfish. He had made a grave error by bringing Knighton into his fold. Weeks ago he had possessed one of the sacred three relics of the Brethren Guardian—the pendant—only to miscalculate the extent of Knighton’s own greed and thirst for power. Now it was gone, and so, too, the chalice—which Knighton, curse his rotting soul, had managed to find and steal. No doubt by now, Sussex and the other two Guardians had both relics back in their possession. Leaving him with none.

But he had the upper hand. He had something the Guardians wanted—or at least one of them did.

“My lord?”

Gnashing his teeth, he growled, “The girl, bring her to me, and I assure you, the rest will follow.”

Through darkness and shadows, Orpheus heard the retreat of his minion. The loss of both pendant and chalice was a momentary setback, one easily overcome. Soon, he consoled himself, soon he would have the woman in his web, and all too soon, the proud Duke of Sussex would follow the lovely bait, and thereby meet his greatest weakness—and his ultimate demise. And in the end he, Orpheus, would take his rightful place in the world. No longer would he be a footnote in time, but the leader he was born to be. And the world would bow at his feet.

CHAPTER FIVE

ANTICIPATION AND NERVOUSNESS coursed through Lucy as she watched Elizabeth elegantly sip her tea. What would Lizzy ask her in return for the secret she was about to shed? Perhaps she should take a dare instead? After all, there were some secrets she wanted to fiercely guard—like the one about Thomas.

Silly game, she thought. She should not have allowed herself to be drawn in so easily. It was a game for children, not grown women who needed to keep their secrets protected and buried.

Except the lure Elizabeth had dangled so temptingly before them had made her weak. Not that she desired to know anything more about the Marquis of Alynwick, but because she dearly wanted to know Elizabeth better. On the outside, the duke’s sister was a vision of loveliness. Despite her blindness, Elizabeth carried herself with pride and confidence, and a cool, sophisticated elegance that Lucy would never be able to achieve. Lizzy was refined, demure and proper. Lucy couldn’t imagine her stepping one toe out of place. But upon occasion, Lucy saw something more complex in Elizabeth’s gray eyes. A shadow of sadness, a flicker of deep pain. She had seen the same in her brother’s eyes. What did they share? What trauma from the past did they try to hide from the world?

Elizabeth cleared her throat, and Lucy saw how her pale fingers trembled slightly as they raked through Rosie’s silky fur. Whatever she was about to share with them, it was meaningful and, Lucy sensed, painful. In truth, there was nothing like the shedding of secrets to bring females together.

“Twelve years ago—No,” Lizzy said with a small smile that conveyed only sadness, “I must go farther back than that. Almost from the moment I became aware of the male species, I have fancied myself in love with Alynwick.”

Lucy found herself biting her lip as she watched Elizabeth gather her self-control. What she wouldn’t give to take back her words. She had hurt Lizzy with the gossip of Alynwick and Lady Larabie.

“Twelve years ago, I gathered the courage to tell him. He confessed that he reciprocated that love, and we …” She swallowed hard, and her grays eyes began to well with tears, tears she held back with a ruthless determination. “We began an affair. It was the summer my father took my brother to the continent for his grand tour after convalescing, and I was left home alone with only the servants to keep an eye on me. Alynwick’s ancestral estate abutted ours, and we spent the entire summer together. I was already losing my sight by then, but he claimed he didn’t care. He persuaded me that it didn’t matter, and I believed him. I …” She lowered her head, her eyes closed. “I gave him my virginity, and the next day—Sunday—his wedding banns were read at church.”

Lucy and Isabella both gasped, and a small sound like a strangled sob was wrenched from Lizzy. “It appeared that his marriage had been arranged for years—yet I had never heard of it. Of course, I behaved like a simpering chit, I was barely eighteen and he was only nineteen. Oh, when I think of how I clung to him, crying and sobbing. But to no avail. While I pleaded and begged him, and spoke of my love, he was … remote. He claimed he thought me amusing, and in truth, my impending blindness disturbed him. It took some time for me to reconcile it all, but I finally came to the conclusion that I had been a fool. I was nothing to him but a diverting interlude to while away the summer days.”

“Black and I shall cut him dead!” Isabella announced with outrage.

“You cannot, what would you say? What grounds would you give? No one but us knows what happened, and until today, I’ve never told a soul what transpired that summer.”

“Lizzy,” Lucy murmured as she reached out to grasp her friend’s hand. “I had no idea. Had I, I would never have told you about what I saw last night.”

“If it had not been you, Lucy, I would have heard it from another source. The marquis does attract gossip, and there are no ends to the females who are willing to create it with him.”

“How you must have suffered,” Issy murmured as she reached forward and rested her palm on Lizzy’s arm.

“Endless nights of wailing into my pillow,” Lizzy said with a deprecating smile, “only to be followed by hours of humiliation whenever I thought on my actions after. I vowed then never to make a spectacle of myself ever again. And especially over a man.”

“If only we had known each other then, Lucy and I would have boxed his ears!”

Elizabeth’s laugh was soft and genuine. “Time heals all wounds. However, I do upon occasion allow myself to reflect upon that summer, and remember those days when he had been everything to me.”

“He’s not worth it,” Isabella sniffed. “To be so careless with you, Lizzy, he doesn’t deserve you, or your love.”

“Oh, I haven’t loved him in years. But tell me,” she asked quietly, “what does he look like? I haven’t dared ask another soul that, for fear of how it might be taken. But I would be a fool if I did not admit that there are some nights, when I lie awake in bed, and wonder about him. Is his hair still dark?”

Lucy felt her own eyes well with tears, and she glanced to her right, to discover that Isabella was discreetly blotting the corner of her eyes with her napkin.

“Yes,” she answered Lizzy. “His hair is dark, like coal—”

“And when the light hits it, does it have the blue of a raven’s wing?”

“Yes, I think it must, for it is black as jet, and given to curl. He wears it unfashionably long, to his shoulders, and when he talks with Black and your brother, he occasionally brushes it behind his ears.”

Elizabeth’s eyes closed, as if she were savoring the images of the marquis. “And his eyes? Are they still dark blue? I always thought the color reminded me of the sky at twilight.”

“I … I don’t know, Lizzy. I thought his eyes dark. There is a hardness to them, and when he looks directly at you, well … one cannot help but to think that he is looking directly past you. There’s coldness there, nothing soft or comforting.”

“Eyes consumed by sin,” her friend whispered. “How sad, for the man I thought I knew that summer was not hard or cold, just … lost and hurting. But then, I didn’t really know him, did I?”

“Sometimes, our hearts won’t allow our eyes to see what is really there, Lizzy.”

Where those words had sprung from, Lucy had no idea. She only knew how right they felt. For it was true, the eye was blind when love and desire was involved. Or was it only blinded by lust? Did the eye truly see love, or was it just for the heart to feel it? Thomas had claimed to love her, had made the same sort of promises to her that Alynwick had made to Lizzy. Only Lucy was certain that but for the fire, Thomas would not have left her the way the marquis had left her friend.

The bit of lace in her pocket reminded her that Thomas was indeed alive. There could be no other explanation for the reappearance of the handkerchief, and for the identical description of Thomas that the duke had given her of the man who had dropped it.

He was alive, and because of those very promises he had given to her, Lucy knew without a doubt he would find a way to come for her.

Squeezing Lucy’s hand, Lizzy replied, “Yes, one can be blind, can’t they, even when they possess the gift of sight. I was young and naive and I learned a difficult lesson.”

“What happened to the woman he was supposed to marry?” Isabella asked. “I hope she made him utterly miserable. He deserved no less after what he did to you.”

Lizzy shrugged. “I do not know the particulars. Only that the marriage did not come into being, and after their broken engagement, he went to the East with Black. Upon his return home, he was changed, much as he is now, irreverent and uncaring, consumed with pleasure and gain. There is nothing left of the man I had given myself to.”