Page 68 of Unmasked by the Marquess
“It will be my pleasure, my absolute delight to deal with anyone who wants to make trouble for my wife or children. You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to it.”
“I’m afraid you haven’t yet realized how much trouble this will all be.”
“You’ve been nothing but trouble since I met you. And I’ve never been happier. I want a lifetime of trouble from you.”
She extricated her hands from his and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss. This was what it was like, then, to finally know that everything was going to be fine. It was a pair of hands on her lower back, drawing her close.
When they broke the kiss and she laid her head on his shoulder, she could feel his heart pounding.
“Now do I get to hear about the kitten?” The creature was peering around Alistair’s neck at Charity. It looked like the head of a dandelion, like if she breathed too hard it might blow away.
“No. Now I take you upstairs to what will be the worst bed you’ve ever slept in, and I get you out of those clothes.”
Alistair leaned against the heavy oak headboard in order to better enjoy the sight of Robin sprawled naked and sated across the monstrous bed. Her presence somehow made sense of the moth-eaten velvet hangings, not to the mention the sheer acreage of the mattress. He planned to use this bed to have her in ways he hadn’t even thought of yet.
The kitten was under the decided impression that Robin’s foot, concealed by a sheet, was a mouse or some other small creature in need of instant fluffy death. Every time the cat reared up and pounced, Robin let out that champagne pop of laughter.
“I was starting to think you really did mean to leave the country without a word,” he said after a few minutes.
“I nearly did,” she confessed, rolling over to face him, chin in hand. “I am in a pickle with Clifton, you know. He said either I had to get him Robbie’s death certificate, or he would expose Louisa and you as accomplices. But—”
“Me? The bastard dared to nameme?” Oh, putting this fellow in his place was going to be a pleasure.
“Yes, so I didn’t think I had much choice but to go through with that boating accident scheme. Keating entirely disapproved, by the way.”
“And rightly so.” He was glad that she hadn’t been entirely on her own during their time apart.
“Anyway, it wasn’t until I had dried off and gotten a hot meal—”
“Wait.” His mind was reeling. “You can’t mean to tell me that you actually went overboard? Why could you not devise a way to stage a drowning without risking death?”
“I was seeking verisimilitude. Self-preservation wasn’t much of a priority at the time. And I thought it was the only way I could make it up to you. Anyway, once my mind cleared, I thought to myself, Charity, you fool, you know a man with power and influence and a bit of ready money. He’ll help you.”
“You’re damned right, I’ll help you. That’s what I tried to tell you in Little Hatley, but I made a hash of it. Listen, Robin. You jumped off a boat to prevent scandal from touching me or Louisa. Surely you’ll allow me to make far lesser sacrifices for you.”
She regarded him gravely for a moment. “I’m not used to being on that end of things.”
“I know you aren’t. But you did let your first husband send you to Cambridge.” He watched her face register his phrasing.
“Oh, you’re going to be like that, are you? ‘Oh, but you let your first husband do such-and-so.’” He gathered that her snooty accent was meant to be an impression of him. “If you recall, my going to Cambridge was the thing that started all this trouble.”
“Bollocks. If you hadn’t gone to Cambridge dressed as the scamp you are, you would never have found yourself on this lumpy mattress tormenting an innocent cat. Your sister would never have become Lady Gilbert de Lacey. And your pestilential Aunt Agatha would never have become an esteemed bluestocking, which she is, according to Amelia Allenby. And, in a roundabout way, I would never have settled the Kent property on Gilbert or that money on the Allenby girls if I hadn’t met you, and surely that counts for something.”
Her mouth was hanging open. “You—the Allenbys—money?” He had never seen her so discomposed.
He nodded and then made a dismissive gesture. There was time enough to talk about the Allenbys later. “Robin, I don’t think I’ll ever have the words to describe what you did for me. I was living a half life until that day you let Louisa’s bonnet loose in Hyde Park. Portia says I was on ice, and she has the right of it. I wasn’t living. I was only... there.”
“Well,” she said, her eyes wet, “somebody really ought to build a statue of me. I’m amazing.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he murmured, pulling her close, still hardly able to believe that he had her here, with him. “Never forget it.” He had been an appalling fool during his last trip to Broughton, when he hadn’t been able to imagine her here. She was the only wife for him, she was the only conceivable mistress for this house. Dreary and derelict, Broughton needed champagne laughter and infinite sunniness. It needed love. He needed love.
A few minutes later Alistair found himself imprisoned in bed. Robin had fallen asleep on one of his shoulders, and the kitten had fallen asleep on his opposite arm. He wouldn’t be getting off this lumpy mattress anytime soon. And he was completely fine with that.
“Too unfair, Robin.” Alistair looked up from the letter he was writing and tossed his quill aside. “Not sporting at all.” He looked at her hungrily, raking his gaze over her body. “Shut that door and come over here so I can look at you properly.”
She had spent hours ransacking the attics of Broughton Abbey in search of something suitable to wear, and had turned up some old frock coats and shirts with ruffled cuffs. These garments, along with breeches that must have been Gilbert’s at some point, gave her something of a swashbuckling air.
Today was the first time she had dressed like this—she was going to stop thinking of these clothes as men’s clothes, because in fact they were hers—because she wanted to wear them, not as part of a necessary disguise. She was soon to be Robin de Lacey, she was dressed vaguely like a pirate, and she was delighted with herself.
