Page 6 of How to Seduce a Viscount (Wed Within a Year #3)

Luce laughed, his mouth curling up into a smile, appreciation twinkling in his eyes.

Good. He liked her boldness. It didn’t intimidate him like it did other men.

‘If you already know, why do you ask? It is both, by the way.’ He paused and the glance he gave her this time was definitely a considering one.

‘Are you sure Roan’s minions are after us?

It doesn’t seem the most logical of choices. ’

She had to be careful or she’d give too much away even in a short sentence. ‘We must consider all possibilities.’

‘What about probabilities ? I am surprised Roan’s minions would have the time to bother. I would have thought they had enough to worry about cleaning up their own losses after Roan’s demise. Does Grandfather think it is likely anyone will cross the Channel in winter simply for revenge?’

‘Revenge is seldom logical.’ What she did not share was that the earl did, in fact, think it a probability of sorts once the weather cleared.

They would come not only for revenge. Some of Roan’s minions were personally connected to the Ottoman forces and to the man Stepan had killed in the water.

They’d cross the Channel for revenge and to retrieve the code.

The earl was indeed worried enough to send her to track down a man who might be Stepan so that he wasn’t taken unawares should the probability become a reality.

But she was not to let on about that to Luce.

She met Luce’s gaze with unwavering directness.

‘I think the earl has lost a grandson and is concerned about losing others. He is riddled with guilt and grief over what happened. He blames himself. He feels as if he made a mistake. It has, perhaps, made him overly cautious when it comes to the Horsemen.’ And when it came to her.

It was that same grief that had the earl urging her towards retirement.

The echoes of that conversation were ever-present in her mind.

I want you safe before the time comes when I am not here to protect you .

Because she owed the old man everything, she could not deny him this one last thing.

Mistakes? His grandfather did not make mistakes.

For a long moment, all Luce could do was stare.

Her audacity astounded him as much as her insinuations.

This angel-haired ragamuffin with the quicksilver eyes deigned to tell him about his grandfather?

To offer insights into the great man that was the Earl of Sandmore?

To suggest the man had weaknesses? Who was she to dare such a thing?

Luce rose and walked to the console holding an array of decanters, in part to collect himself and in part because a drink was certainly in order despite the early hour. He poured two brandies and offered her one. She accepted the glass matter-of-factly, which was telling in its own way.

Luce re-took his seat. ‘I find it intriguing that you believe you know my grandfather so well as to understand his mind on such personal matters.’ And yet there were signs she might be right.

When Caine had married in August, Grandfather had turned the day-to-day running of the Horsemen and the Sandmore network over to Caine.

At Kieran’s wedding in December, Grandfather had settled a considerable sum on Kieran and his new bride for the upkeep of their estate.

‘I have been with the earl for a long time,’ she offered, and took a sip of the brandy with a manner that suggested she drank it often.

He admired her confidence even dressed in borrowed night attire.

She might be sipping brandies dressed in a ball gown for all her elan at the moment.

It was hard to remember she’d been stabbed and writhing with fever five days ago.

In fact, it was hard to remember much at all with her sitting there in his dressing gown.

He couldn’t recall his nightwear ever looking so good and that tangle of platinum hair was positively seductive.

‘How long have you been with Grandfather?’ Luce gathered himself.

It was ridiculous to be so affected by her.

He’d had plenty of conversations with plenty of beautiful women and never once had trouble keeping his thoughts in order.

It couldn’t be terribly long. He was thirty-two and he’d been with Grandfather since he was twenty.

Twelve years. He’d cut his teeth on Napoleon’s war.

She was what, twenty? Twenty-two? Although she could pass for younger.

Sitting there, swamped in his night clothes, one might mistake her for sixteen on a casual glance.

A closer glance would reveal the error, though.

She was no waif. That was an illusion and perhaps a convenient, oft used disguise.

He’d had hours to truly discern the truth of her while she’d lain unconscious with fever.

‘Fifteen years,’ she replied over the rim of her glass, her eyes intent on him because the minx knew her answer would shock him. Beyond the shock though was disbelief.

‘Do you expect me to believe that?’ He grinned into his glass. Her subterfuge was falling apart. ‘It’s not possible. You would have been a child.’ The look on her face stalled the glass at his lips. ‘ Were you a child?’

He’d not considered that and if he was being honest this conversation had elevated his curiosity, which had been on a barely contained simmer since he’d carried her bleeding body upstairs and patched her up.

She was a woman full of contradictions. An angel who wielded a blade with the devil’s own deadly precision.

‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me how you became acquainted with my grandfather? Did you find him, or did he find you?’

She shifted in the big chair and adjusted the blanket, her robe slipping open to reveal the soft curve of a breast beneath the nightshirt.

‘He found me picking pockets where I shouldn’t have been when I was eight.

’ She gave a smug smile and made no effort to readjust the robe.

The minx enjoyed shocking him in all ways.

Luce schooled his features, pretending to take each revelation in stride.

‘I was living on the London streets, running with a gang of pickpockets, sleeping on straw in a damp cellar in St Giles, eating whatever I could cadge or cajole. One day, I picked the wrong pocket, or perhaps the right one. Your grandfather caught me and offered me a choice. Either he could turn me in or I could work for him.’ She gave a delicate lift of her shoulder on her good side.

‘I could tell from the look of him that he was a man with power. If he turned me in it would be straight to the prison. The choice was easy. But some days I regretted it and I am sure your grandfather did, too. It was hard work, harder than I thought it would be, and I was stubborn.’

Luce’s brow arched in sardonic precision. ‘I wouldn’t have guessed it.’

‘You see, I couldn’t just go straight to work for him, I had to be cleaned up in all ways.

I needed schooling, I needed manners. By the time your grandfather was done with me, I could speak, read and write three languages.

I knew how to address all ranks of people, how to dress for any occasion, how to dance, how to shoot, how to use a knife, how to ride, how to fight and a hundred other things I had no idea I would need to know,’ she finished proudly.

Luce studied her afresh. Grandfather had done well.

Any hint of the street had been entirely erased from her voice, her movements.

He would not have guessed her beginnings had been so meagre, so bright was the polish on her now.

But perhaps her story explained her tenacity on his doorstep, the will to fight, to win at all costs, without hesitation.

Perhaps the scrapper in her had not been bred out.

‘I assume this means you have no parents? No brothers or sisters?’ Grandfather would not have taken a child with a family.

She nodded and the pride with which she’d ended her tale faded. ‘There’s no one. I don’t remember my parents.’ Her fingers were worrying the blanket now. He’d hit on a difficult subject for her. She might not remember them, but she remembered something.

A gentleman would let it be and Luce was usually a gentleman.

But not always, not when there was information to be had.

She’d finished her brandy and he swapped her glass for his, pressing the fuller glass into her hands.

‘Not a single memory? Surely you did not spring into the world as an eight-year-old pickpocket.’

The quicksilver eyes dimmed to grey. ‘I’d lived in the rookeries with the other children since I was three.

It was all I knew. I don’t think children have any earlier memories before they’re three.

’ She glanced at him, perhaps waiting for him to challenge her before she went on.

‘There was an older girl, Maggie, who looked after the little ones at night. She would tell us stories. Sometimes she shared her bread with me if she had extra. The best stories she told were the ones about each of us. She even gave each of us a birthday. It was usually the day we were brought to the cellar, but we didn’t know differently.

We barely knew our names. She told me I was brought in October by a man who said my name was Wren.

I had a blanket with me and the clothes I wore. ’

‘Where does Audley come from, then?’ Luce enquired, genuinely curious even as he was morbidly enrapt in her horrific tale. His heart went out to the little girl who’d had the tenacity to take her circumstances in stride and survive.

‘Your grandfather found me on Audley Street. It was the beginning of a new life for me so it seemed appropriate to have a new name of sorts.’ She flashed a brief smile trying to make light of a maudlin tale.

‘That is the sum total memory of my origins. Needless to say, the blanket and I have long parted ways and I am much better off for having met your grandfather.’

What an awful story. There were gaps but they were easily filled in and some things were best left unspoken because they were too hurtful to say aloud—that her family had sold her to the pickpocket gang.

It did happen. A family with too many mouths to feed would often trade their children in exchange for coin.

Luce’s stomach twisted at the thought of abandoning, or worse—selling one’s own child.

She would not want his pity. She had barely tolerated his help when she needed it.

Pity would be met with scorn. He understood the reasons, though.

She’d been forced to be self-reliant, forced to distrust. She’d lived a life devoid of love and connection.

She’d not let it destroy her. Instead, she’d forged her strength from it. Impressive. And sad.

He wasn’t sure his reaction was entirely one of pity. He wanted to protect her. To show her what life could be like when people were surrounded by family. By the caring of others.

‘After all of that schooling, what do you do for Grandfather?’ He asked his question again. If she was a messenger, she was certainly a high-end one with an education equal to that of he and his brothers.

‘I pass messages for your grandfather and I collect bits of information here and there. I go where the Horsemen cannot, just like any of his many agents and messengers.’ She stifled a yawn with her hand.

She was being vague again and she was tiring, perhaps thanks to the brandy or perhaps due to being out of bed for the first time in nearly a week. Luce reached over to take her brandy glass and set it aside. ‘I’ve worn you out. I’ll help you back to bed.’

‘No, please. I’ve had enough of bed for a while. We haven’t talked about the code yet.’ She yawned again.

‘We can talk about the code later,’ Luce insisted.

‘You’ll send me back to bed and forget about me like you have all week. You disappeared once I was out of danger.’

‘Because I had work to do. The code must be solved.’ And because staying beside her had proven to be too distracting.

He had originally brought his work to her bedside but he’d spent more time wondering about her than he had trying to create a cipher.

He’d been entranced by her hair and by the ethereal expression on her face.

He’d made up stories in his head about who she was.

All proof perhaps that he’d been too long without a woman beside him or that his brothers’ married states were taking a toll on him.

So, he’d put himself beyond distraction and removed himself to the library where he staunchly remained except for the few minutes each day he allowed himself to check on her at dinner and assure himself that her recovery was well under way.

‘A compromise then,’ she negotiated with a smile. ‘I’ll rest here on the sofa and when I wake up refreshed you can share what you’ve discovered about the code with me.’

Which wasn’t going to be much. He’d made little headway on it. ‘Fine, we have an accord. But let me help you to the sofa for my peace of mind.’ Perhaps the best way to assist her would be to make her feel as if she were helping him instead.

‘I feel silly taking a nap at eleven in the morning,’ she murmured as he settled her on the sofa. ‘It’s not even time for luncheon.’ But she was visibly losing the fight. Already, her eyes were shut.

Luce tucked the blanket about her. ‘You have two hours until lunch, plenty of time to nap. You forget you left half your blood on my doorstep along with the bodies.’ It would be a long while before he would be able to erase the memories of that night, watching her blood seep out of her as fast as he could staunch it.

He studied her face. She did seem pale. ‘Grandfather would never forgive me if something happened to his pickpocket princess.’ She didn’t hear his jest. She was already fast asleep.