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Devil take them, would they never stop?
Finally, after about two more minutes that felt like two decades, the tumult subsided.
Leave, Lydia silently commanded. You’ve had your fun. Now go away.
But no, now they had to exchange pillow talk.
“Lovely performance, Annette,” said the man. “But you may tell your mistress that one accommodating slut is not enough to appease me.”
The mattress shifted and a pair of stockinged masculine feet descended to the floor, inches from Lydia’s head. She felt Ainswood’s hand slide over her back and press her down firmly.
She comprehended his silent message: Keep still.
She remained still, although it seemed that every muscle in her body was twitching. From her vantage point, it was evident that the fellow was conducting a search similar to theirs. She stifled a gasp when he unearthed the hatbox she’d emptied.
But he flung it aside and snatched up a bonnet. “Here’s my silver stickpin,” he said. “Now, do you know what this looks like? It looks like adding insult to injury. After keeping what she knew was mine, and lying when I asked her whether I’d left it here, she has the effrontery to flaunt the thing in public—adorning her garish bonnet, no less.”
“I did not know,” came the girl’s uneasy voice. “I never saw it before, I promise you, monsieur.”
The stockinged feet advanced to the bed, then disappeared as he climbed onto it, the mattress sinking under his weight. The girl let out a shriek.
“Do you like that, Annette?” the man asked, his voice tinged with amusement. “Would you like to be my pincushion for an hour or so? I can think of many interesting places to—”
“Please, monsieur. It was not me. I did not take it. Why do you punish me?”
“Because I am very cross, Annette. Your mistress stole my wicked little stickpin—one of a kind, and it cost me plenty. And she’s stolen—or driven off—the little flower girl I’d set my heart on. A pretty little cripple, all alone in the world. She wasn’t in her usual place in Covent Garden last night, but Corrie was there, all smiles. The girl wasn’t there tonight, either.” The mattress moved violently and the girl cried out.
Lydia felt Ainswood’s body tense beside her. She, too, was tensing, eager to spring out and beat senseless the foul thing above them. But the girl began to giggle, and Lydia reminded herself what sort of girl Annette was: second only to Madam Brees in ruthlessness and brutality, Annette was the one who usually helped Josiah and Bill break in new girls.
Lydia found Ainswood’s hand and pressed hers upon it, willing him to remain where he was.
“No, this isn’t the way to punish her, is it?” the man was saying. “What does she care what I do to you?”
Once more his feet descended to the floor. This time, he collected the garments he’d discarded so hastily.
“Get dressed,” he said. “Or stay undressed, whatever you prefer. But you’re going on a treasure hunt, Annette, and I hope for your sake it’s successful.”
“But I do not know what has become of the jewelry.”
Lydia’s heart tried to crawl into her throat.
The girl knew the jewelry was missing. Evidently her client had either returned or arrived unexpectedly, and interrupted her ransacking of Coralie’s bedroom. It must have been Annette and this vile man they had heard arguing downstairs.
The man laughed. “What good is that rat’s nest to me? It would take weeks to untangle it, and for what? A very few items of any value, mixed with a prodigious lot of worthless gewgaws. Corrie has no taste, no discernment, only greed. No, my little pincushion. I want the silver, gold, and banknotes. The box. I know what it looks like, but I’m not in a humor to hunt for it.”
“Monsieur, I beg you. I am the only one she tells where it is. If it is gone, she will blame me, and she—”
“Tell her I made you do it. I want you to tell her. I want her to know. Where is it?”
After a brief pause, Annette answered sullenly, “In the cellar.”
Her swain moved to the door. “I’ll wait at the back while you fetch it. Make it quick.”
The mattress bounced as the girl alit from the bed. Muttering in French too low for Lydia to understand, Annette picked up her garments and hurried out after him.
The door had scarcely closed behind Annette, and Lydia had hardly begun breathing normally again, when Ainswood gave her a push. “Out,” he whispered.
Lydia obediently wriggled out from under the bed, the hand on her hindquarters hastening her exit. He didn’t wait for her to scramble up from the floor, but dragged her up and pushed her toward the light closet door.
They were obliged to wait at the window while a servant exited the privy. A moment after the menial had departed, Lydia was climbing down from the building’s roof. Ainswood reached the ground at the same time and grabbed her shoulder. “Stay here,” he murmured in her ear. “I’ve something to do. It won’t take long.”
Lydia tried to do as she was told, but after several tense minutes, curiosity got the better of her. She edged cautiously along the wall of the outdoor necessary and peeped ’round the corner.
She saw Ainswood’s big form leaning against the house wall near a stairway leading belowground. As she watched, a man ascended, bearing a small box. He paused when he caught sight of the masked idler, then started to descend again, but Ainswood moved very quickly.
While Lydia watched, dumbstruck, the duke dragged the man up the stairs and flung him against the wall. The box clattered to the ground at the same instant Ainswood’s fist crashed into his prey’s gut. The man doubled over. The big fist smashed again—into his face, this time—and he toppled to the ground.
“You shit-eating maggot,” Ainswood said in low, hard tones Lydia scarcely recognized as his. Turning from his unconscious victim, the duke untied his mask. He cast it aside as he strode toward her.
Numbly, she pulled off her own mask.
He took her arm and steered her out of the narrow yard and into Francis Street.
Not until they reached the Tottenham Court Road did Lydia find her voice. “What in blazes was that for?” she asked breathlessly.
“You heard him,” he said in the same dangerously low tones. “The flower girl. He was the one who tried to lure her—and now you can deduce what he would have done to her.”
Lydia came to a stop and looked down at his hands, then up into his hard, angry face.
“Oh, Ainswood,” she cried softly. She reached up and grasped his shoulders. She meant to shake him, because he was such a fraud—pretending, last night, that he’d thrown money at the girl merely to get her out of the way.
Lydia did start to shake him. But then her arms circled those massive shoulders, and she hugged him instead. “Thank you. It’s what I wanted to do—smash him.” And I could kiss you for it, she thought as she tilted her head back to look again into his grimly set countenance.
But thinking it wasn’t enough.
She kissed him.
Still, she wasn’t altogether lost to reason. She meant the kiss to be quick, a brief salute to his chivalry. Her lips would touch his cheek lightly, a friendly gesture for a job well done.
But he turned his head and caught the kiss on his mouth, and when his arms lashed about her, she understood what a fraud she was, pretending she’d wanted anything less.
The mouth crushing hers wasn’t gentle and persuasive as it had been last night, but angry and insistent.
She should have broken away, but she didn’t know how to resist what she wanted so badly, bad as it was to give in. She curled her arms ’round his neck and drank in greedily the wild heat and anger. Like some dangerous liquor, it raced through her veins, stirring the devil inside to mad joy.
She should not feel so happy, as though it were she who’d conquered instead of being conquered. But she was glad, feverishly so, because the iron bands of his arms crushed her, molding her to him as though he would crush her into his skin. This was whe
re she wanted to be: part of him, as though he had a piece missing and she was the only one that fit.
His mouth pressed for more, and she parted to him, and shivered with guilty pleasure when his tongue tangled with hers in sinful intimacy. His big hands moved over her, boldly, as though she belonged to him, as though there was no question about it. And in that moment, it seemed inarguable to her.
She let her own hands move down to slip under the edge of his waistcoat, over his shirt, and she shivered again as the powerful muscles tautened under her touch. Then she understood she had power over him as well. She searched until she found the place where he couldn’t hide the truth from her, where she could feel the furious beat of his heart against her palm.
