Page 25 of Worth Any Price
“What have I done now?” Nick asked, suspecting that some kind of punishment was being inflicted on him. Swiftly he mulled over his actions of the past few months. There had been the usual minor infractions, but nothing out of the ordinary. He found it infuriating that Sir Ross, despite his so-called retirement, still had the ability to manipulate him. And Morgan, damnhis eyes, would never go against Sir Ross’s wishes.
Amusement flickered in Morgan’s eyes. “To my knowledge, you’ve done nothing wrong, Gentry. I suspect that Sir Ross wishes to discuss your actions at the Barthas house fire.”
Nick scowled. Two months earlier, just before taking the commission from Lord Radnor, he had received an on-duty summons to run to the fashionable quarter near Covent Garden. A fire had started in a private house belonging to Nathaniel Barthas, a rich wine merchant. Being the first constable to arrive on the scene, Nick had been informed by onlookers that no one in the family had been seen to exit the burning building.
Without stopping to think, Nick had dashed inside the inferno. He had found Barthas and his wife on the second floor, overcome by smoke, and their three children crying in another room. After managing to rouse the couple, Nick had ushered them from the home while carrying the three screaming imps beneath his arms and on his back. In what seemed a matter of seconds afterward, the house had exploded into flames, and the roof had caved in.
To Nick’s chagrin, theTimeshad published an extravagant account of the incident, making him out to be some grand, heroic figure. There had been no end of friendly needling from the other runners, who had adopted expressions of mock worship and exclaimed adoringly whenever he’d entered the public office. To escape the situation, Nick had requested a temporary leave from BowStreet, and Morgan had given it to him without hesitation. Thankfully, the public was possessed of a short memory. During the past eight weeks of Nick’s absence, the story had disappeared, and things had finally returned to normal.
“The damned fire is irrelevant now,” he said brusquely.
“Sir Ross is not of that opinion.”
Nick shook his head in annoyance. “I should have had the sense to stay out of the place.”
“But you didn’t,” Morgan returned. “You went inside, at great peril to yourself. And because of your efforts, five lives were saved. Tell me, Gentry, would you have reacted the same way three years ago?”
Nick kept his face smooth, although the question startled him. He knew the answer at once... no. He would not have seen the value in taking such a risk, when there would have been no material benefit in saving the lives of ordinary people who were of no use to him. He would have let them die, and although it might have bothered him temporarily, he would have found a way to put it out of his mind. He had changed in some inexplicable way. The realization made him ill at ease.
“Who knows,” he muttered with an insouciant shrug. “And why should it matter to Sir Ross? If I am being summoned so that he can give me a pat on the head for a job well done—”
“It’s more than that.”
Nick scowled. “If you’re not going to explain or give me some work, I’m not going to waste my time sitting here.”
“I will not keep you, then,” the magistrate said equably. “Good day, Gentry.”
Nick headed for the door, paused as he remembered something, and turned back to Morgan. “Before I go, I need to ask a favor. Will you use your influence with the registrar to get a civil license by tomorrow?”
“A marriage license?” The only sign of Morgan’s puzzlement was the subtle narrowing of his eyes. “Doing errands for Lord Radnor, are you? Why does he wish to marry the girl with such haste? And why would he condescend to wed in the registrar’s office, rather than have a church ceremony? Furthermore—”
“The license isn’t for Radnor,” Nick interrupted. The words suddenly stuck in his throat like a handful of thistles. “It’s for me.”
An interminable silence followed as the magistrate worked things out for himself. Finally recovering from an attack of jaw-dropping astonishment, Morgan fastened his intent gaze on Nick’s reddened face. “Justwhomare you marrying, Gentry?”
“Miss Howard,” Nick muttered.
A snort of disbelieving laughter escaped the chief magistrate. “Lord Radnor’s bride?” He regarded Nick with mingled amusement and wonder. “My God. She must be an unusual young woman.”
Nick shrugged. “Not really. I’ve just decided that having a wife will be convenient.”
“In some ways, yes,” Morgan said dryly. “In other ways, no. You might have done better to give her to Radnor and find some other womanfor yourself. You’ve made a considerable enemy, Gentry.”
“I can handle Radnor.”
Morgan smiled with an amused resignation that annoyed Nick profoundly. “Well, allow me to offer my sincere felicitations. I will notify the superintendent-registrar, and the license will be waiting at his office tomorrow morning. And I urge you to speak to Sir Ross soon thereafter, as his plans will be all the more relevant in light of your marriage.”
“I can hardly wait to hear them,” Nick said sarcastically, making the chief magistrate grin.
Grimly wondering what kind of scheme his manipulative brother-in-law was devising, Nick took his leave of the Bow Street office. The sunny April day had rapidly become overcast, the air turning cool and damp. Maneuvering nimbly through the mass of carriages, wagons, carts, and animals that clogged the streets, Nick rode away from the river, toward the west. Abruptly Knightsbridge quickly gave way to open country, and enormous stone mansions on large tracts of land replaced the rows of terrace-houses built on neat squares.
As the aggressive outlines of Lord Radnor’s weighty Jacobean mansion loomed before him, Nick spurred his horse to a more urgent gait. The chestnut’s iron shoes crunched steadily over the long graveled drive that led to the house. The last and only time Nick had come here was to accept Radnor’s commission. All business thereafter had been conducted with the earl’s agents,who’d forwarded Nick’s occasional reports to him.
As he felt the small weight of the enameled miniature case in his coat pocket, Nick briefly regretted the fact that he would have to return it to Radnor. He had carried it, stared at it, for two months, and it had become a sort of talisman. The lines of Lottie’s face, the shade of her hair, the sweet curve of her mouth, had been carved into his brain long before he had met her. And yet the likeness—that of a pretty but rather ordinary face—had captured nothing of what made her so desirable. What was it about her that moved him so? Perhaps it was her mixture of fragility and valiance... the intensity that simmered beneath her quiet exterior... the electrifying hints that she possessed a sensuality that rivaled his own.
It made Nick uncomfortable to acknowledge that his desire for Lottie was no less acute than Radnor’s. And yet they each wanted her for entirely different reasons.
“No expense is too great in my quest to create the perfect woman,”Radnor had told him, as if Lottie were destined to play Galatea to his Pygmalion. Radnor’s idea of female perfection was something entirely different than Lottie. Why had he fixed his attentions on her, rather than on someone who was far more tractable? It would have been infinitely easier to dominate a woman who was submissive by nature... but perhaps Radnor was irresistibly attracted to the challenge that Lottie presented.
