Chapter Six

In time the old king died and King Heartless took his place. The new king decided his kingdom was too small, so he invaded his neighbors’ kingdoms, riding into battle clad in golden armor. And because he had no heart, he gave no quarter to the armies who fought him.…

—From King Heartless

Two weeks later Val paused a moment in the corner of his ballroom and drank in the sweet, heady liqueur of his success. Every person of import in London was here—some very much against their will, for he’d had to make gentle and not-so-gentle insinuations about the repercussions were they to refuse his invitations. Here was an elderly roué, tottering in heels, his macabre rouged face peering beneath a high periwig. The man had once whispered secrets into the ears of kings and queens and now was rumored to be dying of the dread disease. There the canny young wife of a member of parliament, much smarter than her husband, and the reason he’d been elected at all. She came from a prominent Whig family—her father and both brothers were members of Parliament—and she was rather interestingly too close to her sister-in-law. And in the corner, a French aristocrat watching carefully from behind a painted fan. He sold secrets to his own government—and to any other willing to meet his price.

Val smiled and inhaled, breathing potential, breathing power. Oh, this was lovely. His ballroom was massed with pink and white hothouse roses, hundreds of them, making the air heavy with their perfume. Swaths of gold cloth were draped at the windows and tied at the tables placed here and there along the walls. The colors were repeated in the livery of the footmen, dozens of them, most hired especially for the ball.

This. This was his.

Val grinned and, employing his gold walking stick, stepped out into what he had caused to be created.

He nodded ironically to the Duke of Kyle, drinking a glass of wine and maintaining a look of wary alertness.

It was a popular expression tonight.

Val exchanged pleasantries with a member of the royal family and then crossed paths with Leonard de Chartres, the Duke of Dyemore. The duke was a tall man, broad-shouldered when he’d been younger, but now beginning to stoop. He wore an elegant bag wig that only highlighted the wrinkled dissipation of the face beneath.

Val swept Dyemore, a contemporary of his father’s, an elaborate bow and upon straightening found the elder man smiling at him, revealing long, coffee-stained teeth.

Dyemore laid a liver-spotted hand on Val’s sleeve. “Montgomery! You’ve grown if anything more beautiful. I’m most pleased to find you’ve taken your rightful place in London society finally. You were gone so many years from our shores.” The last was said with a sort of sly twist of Dyemore’s purple lips.

“Thank you, sir,” Val murmured. “I sailed near round the world, I vow, and returned to find everything changed, everyone aged, almost decayed some would say.”

Dyemore’s smile didn’t falter at the admittedly unsubtle jab, but the corners of his mouth crimped, deepening the wrinkles there. “Have you decided to assume your rightful place in other areas as well? Your father, I know, would’ve wished it.”

Dyemore moved his big arthritic hand from Val’s sleeve to his shoulder.

Val stilled, glancing at the duke’s hand, and noticed that his sleeve had fallen back, revealing a tiny tattoo on the inside of the old man’s wrist. It was in the shape of a dolphin. “Indeed? I had thought the… club defunct by now?”

“Oh, no, oh, no!” Dyemore chuckled. “As vital as it ever was—perhaps more so even than in your father’s time. We have a great many members. We just lack a new heir for when I decide to retire from my leadership.”

Val glanced up into Dyemore’s eyes—a bright, bloodshot green. He remembered, long, long ago, seeing those same eyes glittering from behind a wolf’s-head mask. Yet what the duke referred to was after all just another means to power, was it not? And what power it would be—to hold dozens of England’s aristocrats in thrall…

Val’s blood rose at just the thought, but he kept his smile serene. “Under certain circumstances, I might be amenable, Your Grace.”

The smile this time was frankly satisfied, like that of a man who had just orgasmed down the mouth of a particularly pretty woman… or boy. “Then we should have a chat. Perhaps you’ll visit me for tea?”

“Perhaps I will, sir.” Val bowed again with a flourish and continued on his way, wondering if he should nip upstairs for a quick bath first.

The sight of Lady Ann Herrick, strolling arm in arm with another lady, one he’d not been introduced to yet, diverted him, however. Lady Herrick was a wealthy widow with whom he’d had a liaison last spring. By the moue she shot him she wouldn’t mind a re-acquaintance, but he’d already swum those waters. Now, her friend was another matter. A petite, buxom redhead—probably hennaed—she had the look of a woman who knew her way around a cock. He arched his eyebrow at her and Lady Herrick’s smile abruptly dimmed, although her friend’s face brightened in almost exactly inverse proportion.

He wondered what Mrs. Crumb’s face would look like should she find him abed on the morrow with the faux redhead. The lovely disapproval, carefully hidden. The exasperation, less well concealed. The sharp comments, meant to cut and reprimand. Oh, he would have a wonderful bickering argument with her and her cheeks would bloom that hot red as her temper rose.

He’d lay his palms against her cheeks to feel the heat. To absorb her emotion.

“Val.”

The voice was Eve’s so naturally he turned, a half smile still playing about his mouth.

His sister’s face was grave, though, as she paced toward him, that man on her arm. “Val, how did you do this? How did you reestablish yourself in London society?”

But he had other, more important matters on his mind as he stared at her, horrified. “What are you wearing?”

She glanced down at the… well, he supposed one must call it a gown. It did, after all, drape her form, covering her adequately if not suitably.

She looked a little hurt. “Don’t you like my new dress?”

“It’s…” He swallowed and turned his head, for his eyes really could not take the sight. “Yellow.”

The man beside her made a restless movement. “So help me, Montgomery—”

“We have the same coloring, you and I,” Val pleaded with his sister. Surely she wasn’t entirely lost to reason? Good God, was this what love did to a person? “We have golden hair, fair skin, blue eyes.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, sounding puzzled.

“Blues,” he said simply, because perhaps her brain was so befogged she couldn’t take in more complex words. “We look good in shades of blue.”

He spread wide his arms, showing her the pale silvery-blue suit that he wore tonight as a demonstration.

“You see?”

Makepeace wrinkled his nose as if an odd thought had entered his brain. “But you’re always prancing about in pink.”

“Yes, yes,” Val said impatiently, waving him off. “I look good in everything, really. But to be safe, blue, not yellow, darling Eve.”

“She looks wonderful,” Makepeace said intensely, which only went to prove that he had lost his mind over this love thing, because Val might adore his sister, but no one could call her beautiful. “The dress is perfect on her.”

“Thank you, Asa,” Eve said. “But I have something much more important to discuss with Val.” He opened his mouth to disagree—very few things trumped one’s toilet, after all—but she continued without pause. “How did you get into the King’s good graces?”

He closed his mouth slowly and smiled. “Why, Eve, whyever wouldn’t I be in His Majesty’s favor?”

“Because,” she said sadly, “you’re a liar and a blackmailer and, for all I know, far worse.”

He blinked, a little… startled. Yes, startled. He’d been called much filthier things before, but never by his sister.

Never by Eve.

“Darling,” he said gruffly.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she said. “You can’t keep hurting people. People I like. People who are my friends.”

“I hardly think you’re bosom bows with His Majesty,” he said, smiling, but his words seemed to fall flat.

“No, Val,” she said, her face stern. “No.”

She used to be so frightened when they were young. Like a pale little ghost, slipping into the shadows, hiding from their vicious elders, trying not to be noticed.

He’d saved her once. Swept her away like a prince in a fairy tale, but that was long ago and far away and perhaps no longer mattered. How were such things counted among normal people?

For she’d thawed. He could see that now. She was no longer that frozen, scared little girl afraid to be noticed. Afraid to live. He supposed he should thank Makepeace for that. For taking his Eve, his sister, and blowing warm life into her. But all he could think was that in doing so, Makepeace had shattered Val’s last link to her.

Leaving him alone in the frozen cold.

He actually shivered, there in the overheated ballroom.

“I love you,” she said quietly. “I always will. But this must stop. You must stop.”

And she took Makepeace’s arm and walked away from him.

He turned, a bit blindly. The room was bright and chattering and he was the king of London. He was. He was.

And yet he felt as if he might be bleeding to death here in his crowded ballroom, all the warmth trickling from his body.

Where was his bloody housekeeper anyway? It was her job to keep him warm. Probably gliding unnoticed in the back hallways, wearing black always, like the inquisitor she was. She would tell him that he’d deserved it. That his sister was right. And then her dark burning eyes would drop to his mouth and widen a bit and he’d think about throwing up her skirts, tearing through staid wool and linen, and finding out if her cunt was as hot and molten as those eyes.

He started for the door, thinking of crimson velvet and burning eyes—and a woman’s face swam into view.

Ah. A quarry. A victim of his plots and of his villainy.

He diverted his course, intercepting the woman. She was on the arm of an older man, her father.

Val swept her an abrupt bow. “Miss Royle. Sir.”

Hippolyta Royle was the only daughter of Sir George Royle, who had gone to the East Indies to make his fortune and had done quite a good job indeed. The result was that Miss Royle had a dowry with few rivals in England.

“Your Grace.” The lady’s face, oval and proud and naturally olive-complexioned, paled at the sight of him.

Actually, he was rather used to that sort of reaction to his sudden appearance.

Blackmailer, and all.

He took her hand and brought it to his lips, peering over her knuckles. Her fingers were trembling. “Might I have the pleasure of this next dance, Miss Royle?”

Oh, she wanted to deny him, he could tell. Her full berry-red lips were pressed together, her dark brows gathered. The lady did not look entirely happy.

A state of affairs that didn’t escape her father. “My dear?”

She patted the elderly man’s hand. “It’s nothing, Papa. It’s just so hot in here.”

“Then perhaps if we venture close to the windows—”

“Oh, but I insist on a turn on the floor,” Val purred, his pulse racing, his nostrils flared. If she darted for cover he’d spring and sink his teeth into her. She was prey—his prey, and he’d not let her go. She was a prize and he’d parade her before all. “If you please.”

The old man frowned as if to object, but she drew a deep breath and nodded. “Certainly, Your Grace.”

“Splendid.” He held out his hand.

She placed hers in his and he glanced around to see who was looking, who was taking note. He frowned for just a second, irritated, for the one he truly wanted to take note wasn’t even in the damned room. Such a shame housekeepers didn’t frequent balls.

He led her to the dance floor where he performed the steps much more gracefully than she, but that was all right. He could hire dance masters to teach her better later.

As he brought her back to her waiting parent he lowered his head to hers and said, “I’ll call on you next week, shall I?”

The hand on his arm jerked, but she kept her composure. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”

“I intend to court you,” he informed her kindly, and then added to make it perfectly clear, “and make you my wife.”

She swallowed. “Oh, no.”

He smiled. “Oh, yes.”

She stopped dead and turned to face him, her fine dark eyes large and her delicate nostrils flared. “I don’t like you. Doesn’t that matter to you at all?”

“No.” He smiled kindly at her, his chest still and frozen. “No one likes me.”

BRIDGET STRODE THROUGH the bustling Hermes House kitchens, surveying her army of footmen and maidservants. What looked like total chaos at first glance turned to concentrated work on closer inspection. Two footmen hurried past her, bearing silver trays of filled wineglasses on their shoulders, no doubt bound for the gentlemen’s gaming room. A row of kitchen maids assembled plate after plate of salmon pâté in a golden jelly. On another table three footmen were making punch in an enormous silver bowl under the watchful eye of a hired butler.

Bridget nodded to herself. After two weeks of near sleeplessness she’d brought off the almost impossible: a successful ball with no advance warning and no mistress of the house to hostess the event. A pity there was no history of housekeepers, for had there been, this night might have been made into legend to be told and retold through the ages, she mused rather whimsically.

She really did need some sleep—and she thought longingly of her little room where no doubt Pip was already curled up on her bed.

But she couldn’t rest yet.

Right now she had to make sure the ball finished as grandly as it had begun.

She motioned to Peg, one of the Hermes House maidservants. “Set a tray of wine for the musicians with some bread, cheese, and meat.” Bridget pointed to two of the hired footmen. “You’ll bring the trays to the musicians with my compliments for the excellent music.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the elder of the two men said, nodding.

“And Peg?”

“Ma’am?” Peg looked up alertly.

“Be sure to water the wine well. They still have hours yet to play.”

Bridget turned without waiting for Peg’s reply, heading for Mrs. Bram, when one of the hired footmen came running into the kitchens near breathless. “Gentlemen come t’ blows in th’ hall. Shattered a vase and there’s blood all about. I think someone heaved up.”

He was white-faced.

Bob tutted. “Anyone dead?”

The hired footman turned to him, wide-eyed. “No?”

“Then best we clean up,” Bob said briskly. “You an’ me can help th’ gentlemen an’ the maids will do the washing, yeah?”

Bridget caught Bob’s eye and nodded approvingly before continuing on her way to Mrs. Bram.

The cook was bent, her reddened face gleaming, over a platter of tiny, delicate white candies. On each she was piping a minuscule pink rose.

Bridget kept her voice low as she asked, “You have enough food, you think?”

“Enough and just a bit more to be safe,” Mrs. Bram said with satisfaction. “But it were close.”

It had been very close. Simply acquiring and preparing all the food and drink needed for the midnight supper tonight had been no easy task and Bridget knew the cook had worked just as hard as she.

“Mrs. Bram, you are to be commended on an excellent job well done,” Bridget said.

“An’ you, Mrs. Crumb, an’ you,” replied the cook.

For a moment Bridget shared a weary smile with the other woman.

And then one of the maidservants touched her shoulder. “There’s a lady asking to speak to you, ma’am.”

Bridget looked at the girl, one of the servants hired for the night. “Me? She asked for me by name?”

The maidservant nodded. “Mrs. Crumb. That’s what she said.”

“Thank you,” Bridget said, and, nodding to Mrs. Bram, made her way to the door of the kitchens.

At first the hallway—admittedly ill lit—seemed crowded only with rushing servants.

But then an elegant figure in a cream-and-gold dress stepped forward. “Mrs. Crumb.”

Bridget recognized Miss Hippolyta Royle at once.

Bridget hurried to her. “Ma’am, this way, please.”

She took the lead silently, hoping that she looked as if she were helping a lady guest with a feminine need of some sort. At the end of the hallway, instead of turning right and taking the stairs up to the main floor, she headed left into a smaller hall. There were several doors here and she used her key ring to unlock one, glancing quickly over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t seen before ushering Miss Royle into a storage closet. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with cheeses, liqueurs, pickles, medicinal herbs and ointments, wax, oils, and vinegars.

There was a small window high on the wall, with shutters on the inside. Bridget opened the shutters to let in a little light from the carriage lanterns on the street before turning to her guest. “What did you need to see me about, ma’am?”

Miss Royle closed her eyes a moment, taking a deep breath. Her face was oval and quite beautiful, her complexion almost olive in the low light, her dark mahogany hair pulled back into intricate loops at the back of her head.

When she opened her eyes they looked desperate. “Oh, Mrs. Crumb, he told me tonight that he’ll be calling on me. That he means to wed me.”

Bridget stared, for she knew at once that Miss Royle was correct. She must be the mysterious fiancée that the duke had talked about. For some reason Bridget had never dreamed it would be someone she already knew. An unfamiliar emotion entered her breast, something akin to rage. She was too overworked, too exhausted from lack of sleep. This news shouldn’t affect her so.

The aristocracy married all the time and rarely for anything as mundane as affection. Of course the duke would blackmail Miss Royle—the most sought-after heiress in England—into marriage. Just because he’d saved Pip for Bridget, just because he’d rescued Mehmed from slavery and worse, just because he’d offered her the use of his library in such a lovely way didn’t mean he wasn’t essentially the same as he’d ever been.

Evil. Vain. Self-serving.

And any other consideration—any other emotion Bridget might have on the matter? Well, that simply wasn’t to be heeded.

Her feelings didn’t pertain.

She straightened, pulling her wandering thoughts together. “I take it that His Grace’s suit does not appeal?”

“No.” Miss Royle pressed her hand to her mouth for a moment before letting it drop again. “No, not at all.”

Bridget nodded. She did understand. The duke was a very mercurial creature—although that was somewhat balanced by great wealth, overwhelming handsomeness, and a magnificent library she hadn’t yet found the time to explore. Also, she secretly found his conversation amusing. Sometimes, at any rate.

Still. She wasn’t the one being blackmailed into a marriage she didn’t want.

Miss Royle took her hands. “You must find the miniature, you must, Mrs. Crumb. I cannot marry the Duke of Montgomery. He is a loathsome man. The mere thought of sharing a marital bed with him…”

She swallowed, closing her eyes.

Bridget squeezed the other woman’s hands. Miss Royle might be wealthy and far above a mere housekeeper in station, but at the moment Bridget felt sorry for her.

“I’ll do my best, ma’am, truly I will.” She hesitated, debating. She didn’t think telling Miss Royle that she’d actually had the miniature in her hands at one point would comfort the other woman—quite the opposite. Instead she said, “He isn’t really as awful as he makes himself out to be.”

Miss Royle frowned, withdrawing her hands. “What do you mean?”

Bridget blinked, feeling awkward. She shouldn’t have spoken so impulsively. “Just that he likes shocking people, I think. If you talk to him about something that truly interests him…”

She trailed away, for Miss Royle was looking at her rather oddly.

Naturally. How would a housekeeper know about conversing with a duke?

Bridget cleared her throat, folding her hands at her waist and saying more formally, “Yes, well. I had better return to my tasks and you to the ball, ma’am. Rest assured I shall look for your miniature.”

“Thank you.” Miss Royle took a breath as if bracing herself. “I feel as if you’re my only hope, you know. It’s as if I’m being stalked by some predator.” She flashed a not-very-convincing smile. “Wouldn’t want to be luncheon.”

Bridget smiled bracingly and opened the door for Miss Royle, watching as she disappeared down the corridor.

Then she closed the shutters of the window and locked the door behind her before leaving as well. No one seemed to particularly notice when she reemerged into the servants’ hallway.

Bridget eyed the hurried flow of maids and footmen and made a decision. She turned back down the hallway, and then took another passage. She walked along it alone, listening to the sounds of the revelries, took another turn, and came to a servants’ hall that ran behind the ballroom. There was a small door here and she turned the handle, opening it and slipping through.

She emerged in an obscure corner—this was a servants’ entrance, after all, meant for such as she. The musicians were directly to her right, a grouping of statuary and vases half shielding the door.

The ballroom was stiflingly hot—so many bodies massed together with innumerable flaming candles made it almost a natural inferno. Bright silks and velvets drifted slowly past. No one could move particularly swiftly due to the crush. She saw him at once, despite the fact that there must be hundreds of people present.

The Duke of Montgomery would always be the center of attention, after all.

He stood in a small group of gentlemen. An aristocrat in a complicated two-tailed wig was talking earnestly at his elbow as the duke surveyed the room. Montgomery wore a pale-blue suit especially made for the ball—she knew since she’d overheard the poor tailor being berated for the last two weeks. It really was a magnificent creation, with silver embroidery at cuffs and pockets and along the edges. His golden hair was tied back with a wide black ribbon and he held a gold walking stick in his left hand.

This was the man who had blackmailed the king of the land. Who had blackmailed her own mother—and still held the means to blackmail her in the future. Who aimed to blackmail Miss Royle into marriage.

He was a terrible, evil man, and most likely mad to boot. She knew that.

And yet.

As if he could hear her thoughts, his head turned and his eyes met hers.

She should’ve ducked before he could see her. That would’ve been the sensible thing to do—the smart thing to do. Instead she lifted her chin and stared back as if she were equal to a duke.

Without acknowledging the gentleman still talking to him, the duke pivoted and walked toward her.

Through that crowded ballroom, as if nothing stood between him and her. And all those people parted as if he were a ship cleaving the waves. Why shouldn’t they? He was the Duke of Montgomery. Nothing stood in his way. He made sure of that.

He made her side and took her hand and simply said, “Come.”

VAL CUT THROUGH his guests, something animal beating at his chest. He was dragging his housekeeper behind him, and if he received an odd look now and again he simply stared back, teeth bared. He took a glass of wine from a passing footman—his fourth of the night—and then he made the French doors that led out onto one of the balconies.

He let go of her hand only long enough to shove aside the gold draperies, open the doors, and pull her outside before shutting the doors again behind them.

It was too late in the season and too cold to open the doors for the ball. That was what they had decided. Or rather what she had decided. He, as he remembered the discussion, had been distracted by his tailor’s egregiously horrible placement of the buttons on his cuffs.

In any case, the result was that the balcony was deserted.

“It’s cold out here, Your Grace,” she said.

“Not with the warmth from the windows,” he replied, which was at least partially true. “Look.”

He turned her to face the garden and all that lay beyond.

“Oh,” she murmured. “The moon is full.”

“Yes.” He leaned his shoulders against the cold stone of his house, let his head fall back, and gazed over her crown at the celestial body. It seemed to hang, pale and glowing and monstrously large, over the rooftops of London. He took a sip of wine. It was tart and rich on his tongue. “I knew a girl once who liked to wish upon the moon.”

“What did she wish for?” Mrs. Crumb asked, her voice low. She had a lovely voice, he realized absently, here in the near dark. Feminine and grave. A voice to whisper secrets. A voice to console and give absolution.

He shrugged, though she couldn’t see. “I don’t remember. Girlish things, I think. I’d take her to the top of the widow’s tower at Ainsdale Castle, late at night, and we’d watch the moon rise. The widow’s tower was very high but she wasn’t afraid. Sometimes I’d steal a pie from the kitchens and we’d picnic up there. I brought up a blanket, too, so she wouldn’t have to sit on the bare stone floor.”

Mrs. Crumb made an aborted movement, as if she’d meant to turn to face him and then changed her mind.

He let the wineglass dangle by his side. “I told her a rabbit lived on the moon and she believed me. She believed everything I told her then.”

“What rabbit?”

“There.” He roused himself, straightening.

He drew her back, fitting her against his chest and setting his chin on her shoulder. She smelled of tea and housekeeperly things, and she was warm, so warm. He caught up her right hand in his and traced the moon with it. “D’you see? There the long ears, there the tail, there the forepaws, there the back.”

“I see,” she whispered.

“I told her the rabbit had lavender fur and ate pink moon clover up there.” His mouth twisted, as he remembered. “She’d watch me with big blue eyes, her mouth half-open, a bit of piecrust on her dress. She hung on every word.”

He could hear her breath, could feel the tremble of her limbs. Did she fear him?

“D’you believe me?” he asked against her ear, his lips wet with wine. She was a housekeeper and housekeepers didn’t matter in the grand schemes of kings and dukes and little girls who wished upon rabbit moons.

But she was silent, damnable housekeeper.

They breathed together for a moment, there in the night air, London twinkling before them, overhung by a pagan moon.

At last she stirred and asked, “What happened to the girl?”

He broke away from her, draining his glass of wine. “She grew up and knew me for a liar.”

He drew his hand across his face and pushed open the doors to his ballroom, striding in without looking back at her.

The heat was dizzying. The voices a grating cacophony. The stink of bodies, perfumed and sweating, nauseating.

Cal the bastard footman emerged from the crowd, a glass of wine in his hand. “Wine, Your Grace?”

Val took the wine and downed it in one gulp. “Get out of my sight.”

For some reason that made Cal smile.

Val shook his head and unhooked his gold walking stick from the loop at his waist. Then he lifted his head and grinned. He was the Duke of Montgomery. He’d successfully blackmailed the King. He was about to blackmail himself a wife. No one loved him.

And that was the way he liked it.