Page 4 of Lord Ashley's Beautiful Alibi
Her lips were everything a woman’s should be—warm and supple, her breath sweet with mint—and when he plunged his tongue inside, she let him. The fright drained out of her. She came into his arms like a lover should, eager and mewling. Compliant and dragging his collar closer so that she could kiss him more easily…
And bite him!
Bitch!He tore away and licked his lip. The taste of iron and sweat. Blood.Of course.
“No time to give you all the love bites you should have,ma cherie.” He clutched her shoulders and pushed her against a tree stump so hard, she grunted. He shot to his feet and admired the prize he’d captured, if only for a second. She was everything a man could want, and if he had hours this morning, and a big, broad bed, he would show her the good time she deserved.
Alas, another time, perhaps. His gaze fell to his farmer’s sack, then he locked his eyes on hers with devilish glee. “Be sure to open that bag before you run home tomadame.” He pushed to his feet, grabbed her hands, and caught her up against him, breasts and belly, legs and lips—and kissed her. Hard. Fast. And done.
She blinked, her green-gold eyes dazed.
He was just as stunned. But today was not what he’d planned. He bowed as elegantly as if he’d been knighted a chevalier of St. Louis. “Adieu, mademoiselle. A bientôt!”
Chapter One
April 1, 1802
Grosvenor Square
London
“Show him in,Friendly. I am as much prepared for the man as I will ever be.”
Kane watched the old butler hobble away and grinned at the clickety-clack of the man’s wooden teeth. Friendly had lost his ivories so long ago no one in the family recalled him with real teeth. But everyone knew the sound of Friendly talking to himself. For the man mumbled night and day, and no one knew exactly what his topics were. But Kane’s father had speculated that Friendly did it to keep his sanity in his service to the Whittington males, who through the ages were known as brawlers, gamblers, and notorious rakehells.
Friendly had never muttered a distinguishable word in criticism of his masters. He was, among household staff, dubbed an angel because God had preserved him to celebrate the other day, his seventieth birthday. Hardy ancestry or luck, if not adherence to the Good Book, had aided the man to work here for nigh on half a century, bowing and scraping to Kane’s grandfather, his father, and his two older brothers in turn.
Now the poor fellow bows to me. May I be worthy of him…for as long as I live. Which, given my summons to HawthorneTrading in an hour, foretells my forthcoming departure from this house, this country, and perhaps this world.
He snorted.
Irony. It was how Kane had lived. And now that he had inherited, through unnatural means of accident for Reginald and pneumonia for Arthur, he was called away, and only Scarlett Hawthorne knew if his mission was to kill…or be killed.
He clicked his tongue and marched around the library once more. What in hell was he supposed to do with the solicitor, Mr. Roberts?
In Kane’s twenty-eight years on this earth, he had never sat in on a discussion with any of the Whittington retainers. He was fortunate his estate manager of Ashbrook, Will Gardener, had come to London from Kent last week to notify him of his brother Arthur’s demise. Otherwise, Kane would have learned of his new responsibilities from theTimes. Kane had last seen his next eldest brother a year ago upon the occasion of the catastrophic carriage accident that had killed their father and his eldest brother, Reginald. Kane and Arthur had not talked in years. Family love had always been in short supply.
Kane paused before the huge astrological globe at his feet and gave it a dolorous, slow spin. He marveled at the large blue-black sphere behind which he had hidden to play hide-and-seek with his two brothers and sister.
The hundreds-year-old books, smelling of ink and mold and old leather, still marched along the shelves in higgledy-piggledy order. Reginald, his eldest brother, to Kane’s knowledge, never took down one. Arthur read only the lurid tales. Most likely memorizing a few choice phrases and useful positions.Whereas I hungered to read each one, stole moments with the tomes, but was hounded by the boys to abandon the nook near the fireplace and cavort with them.
Now both of them were gone, as were their parents and their young sister, Louise.And I am left with what they taught me. How to fight like a bare-knuckle boxer. Drink like a bosun. Curse like a fishwife. Cheat like a knave. And swive.
In none of that had he ever met his brothers’ standards.
That was why he’d abandoned playtime in favor of employing his dubious talents in the pursuit of valuable results. For the country. For the Crown. Yet after the fiasco along the road to Malmaison, when one of his friends was brutally killed, Kane had asked Scarlett Hawthorne for less perilous duties.
“No more abductions or assassinations,” he’d told his director and head of her own trading company in the city. “My skills at lying are best.”
“Deception is your forte,” she had argued—gutsy of her to do so, since she had just recently taken over her trading company and her job running her father’s intelligence operation. She was also terribly young. Twenty-two and quite beautiful. A lady with a veiled past, who some said had once been wed and had the marriage annulled. Whatever her personal problems, she kept all her secrets to herself—and Kane ventured they numbered in the thousands.
“I care not where you send me, Scarlett, nor what you wish me to find. But leave the killing to those who have a taste for blood.”
For two years, she had.
“Lord Assshley,” intoned old Friendly as he stood unsteady at the threshold and fought to fit his teeth to his gums. “Mishtur Robertss, shir.”
Kane welcomed the man in. Noting the sprightly little fellow had walked toward him in wet shoes that squished, he immediately offered him a chair near the fire. “Terrible spring storm out there, Roberts. Good of you to come. Brandy, perhaps?”
