CHAPTER9
Garrick woke in the earliest strains of dawn to abject regret and an ache in his back, which was entirely suiting, when he thought about it. After all, what kind of an idiot would bring an unwed, thoroughly inappropriate woman—poorly garbed as a man—into his home, in the midst of the night, and then give her his bed?
Him, that was who.
Thank Christ he had told his valet not to wait for him the night before. Winston would await Garrick’s ringing for him, as was his customary habit for a shave, his morning ablutions, and dressing. But there would be no ringing of the bell pull for him with his unwanted guest still under foot.
Speaking of which, where the devil was Rosebud? Ordinarily, she slept curled at his feet, a purring warmth he found rather soothing, though he would never admit it aloud. He was just as fond of the bit of fur as she was of him, much to the dismay of his valet, who grumbled over the perpetual presence of chintz cat fur on Garrick’s coats.
Suppressing a yawn and a grunt of pain at the knot centered in his lower back—his right arse cheek had fallen asleep, by God—Garrick rose to a sitting position and looked to the far end of the chamber where his bed loomed. Taunting him not just with its promise of comfort and warmth, but with its occupant.
Or rather, make that occupants. For there, curled beside Miss Pen Sutton’s counterpane-swaddled form, lay none other than his cat.
“Traitor,” he grumbled.
Rosebud’s ears twitched.
How like a female to be concerned for her own comfort rather than sacrificing it for the sake of loyalty to the man who kept her warm and fed. But then, he could hardly paint Rosebud with the same brush as Veronica. She had thrown him over for the Duke of Rollingham, and he did not suppose she had ever truly cared about him. Rosebud, at least, loved him.
Or so he thought.
The form on the bed stirred.
And so did his cock. For the sight of her long, auburn locks fanning on his pillow was more erotic than he had imagined it would be. Naturally, he had imagined. All night long until he had finally fallen asleep in misery on the hard floor. Regardless of how sumptuous the carpets were, the floor was not a place he wished to sleep again.
Ever.
Pen sat up, stretching her arms high over her head. The movement sent the counterpane slipping to her waist. And lecherous, unrepentant rogue that he apparently was, Garrick could not keep his gaze from slipping to the tempting fullness of her breasts and the stiff peaks of her nipples prodding the cambric.
He knew the precise shade of those nipples. Knew how they felt, hard and puckered in his mouth. Knew the soft sounds of need she made when he sucked them. And he knew how tight her cunny was, clamping around his fingers when she spent.
Damnation.
This was no way to begin the day, with a cockstand he could not ameliorate and a cat who had defected to the enemy side.
He scowled. “You are indecent, Miss Sutton.”
Beautiful, too. He had only previously risen in the morning to one woman in his bed, and that woman had slipped into his blood like a poison. He had vowed to never allow another to have such power over him again.
And aside from this inconvenient lust raging though him for one very wrong fortune hunting East End siren, he had lived his life above reproach ever since he had so foolishly lost his heart.
“You are every bit as rude in the morning as you are in the evening, Lord Lordly,” Pen returned, her tone crisp.
Naturally, she did nothing to hide herself.
He wondered if she had removed her trousers. Lord in heaven, if her legs were bare beneath that damned coverlet…
No. You will cease all vein of thought concerning Pen Sutton’s breasts, nipples, limbs, cunny, hair, mouth… Fuck.
What had she done to him? He scarcely ever used epithets or coarse speech. Not even in his own bloody thoughts. Until she had entered his life.
“I will leave the chamber so you might have some privacy to prepare yourself for the day,” he said, irritated by the hoarseness of his voice and the hardness of his prick.
Flipping back the counterpane he had used in the night for his makeshift bed, he rose to his feet. A sharp twinge in his back had him inhaling.
To his dismay, she was at his side in an instant, bare legs peeping from beneath her white shirt in proof that she had indeed removed her trousers. He had a brief glimpse of creamy calves and dainty ankles before he jerked his furious gaze upward.
“What is amiss?” she asked.
He ground his molars against another stabbing pain as he attempted to put some proper distance between them. “My back is aching. How is your ankle?”
“My ankle is well enough. I did warn you not to carry me up all those stairs, did I not?” Clucking as if she were a governess who had just found her charge committing some mischievous deed, she moved.
A hint of her floral scent hit him, and curse him for a fool, but he inhaled quickly, wanting more, wanting to somehow trap it inside his lungs and keep it there. But that was stupid, every bit as stupid as Aidan’s decisions were. Nonsensical. A scent could not be preserved; it was fleeting, much like the loyalties of a woman or a feline. And if he did not take care, he would land himself in the same manner of trouble his ne’er-do-well brother had.
“My back aches from sleeping on the floor all night,” he snapped, irritated with himself for weaknesses he had long since thought cured. Apparently, some lessons were more difficult to learn than others.
“Whose fault is that?” she asked pertly. “I have a bed of my own awaiting me at The Sinner’s Palace. I most certainly did not need you to take me prisoner—”
“You are hardly a prisoner, madam,” he interrupted wryly, attempting to shift and stretch his tensed back muscles and wincing as new pain flared.
“—and hold me against my will, forcing me to spend the night in your town house,” she continued, as if he had not spoken at all. “I do hope for your sake that my brothers have chosen to react rationally and reasonably to the note you sent telling them where I have gone. Because knowing them, they will be knocking down your door, planting your butler a facer, and racing up the stairs any moment to find me.”
As if on cue, a soft rap sounded at the door.
It would seem the previous day was doomed to repeat itself. Only, this time he was wearing far more clothing even if she wasn’t. His eyes slipped to her bare feet.
How was it that even those were beautiful? He had never thought to take note of such a serviceable part of the feminine anatomy before. But then, it was entirely possible that it was not her feet he found alluring, but the woman herself. She seemed to have cast a spell of idiocy over him.
Likely, the same one she had cast over Aidan.
“My lord?”
The voice of his butler in the hall tore Garrick from his thoughts.
He cleared his throat. “Yes, Perkins?”
“I must beg your forgiveness for the intrusion at this early hour. However, there are several…ruffians…who are awaiting you in the drawing room. They have threatened the footmen with bodily harm and refuse to leave.”
“That would be them,” Pen said with a laugh. “I warned you.”
“Hush,” he whispered.
If anyone below stairs learned that he had brought an unknown female to his chamber last night, he had no doubt tongues would wag. It would only be a matter of time before his ignominy reached Mother and the rest of polite society. And Lady Hester, too.
To his butler, he called, “I shall be down forthwith, Perkins. Thank you.”
“I will speak to them,” Pen told him quietly. “After I explain what has happened to Lord Aidan, I doubt they will attempt to do you any harm.”
She doubted?
How comforting.
“Of course they will not do me any harm,” he snapped with more confidence than he felt. “I am the son of a duke, and they are lowborn East End thieves.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Her eyes flashed with fire. “My brothers are not thieves!”
“Use a quieter voice, if you bloody please,” he growled. “I have no wish for the entire household to know I have secreted the fortune hunter who was attempting to swindle my brother into marrying her into my chamber.”
“You would not need to worry about that if you had not forced me to come here when I had no wish to do so.”
Her chest was heaving in her outrage, and damn it, but those nipples of hers…
No. Stop this. You can control yourself. There are far more important matters to attend to than Pen Sutton’s magnificent breasts.
Pity he could not think of one.
He shook his head. Finding his brother. The Suttons. Ransom and a potential drubbing. And what to do with the minx before him.
Kiss her.
Bed her.
Damn it.
“Nonetheless,” he bit out, “I will thank you to dress while I face your brothers.”
“I will dress and face them with you,” she countered, ever the stubborn wench he had come to know and admire.
Admire?
He hadn’t had anything to eat for dinner last night. Likely, he was famished. Starving. He did feel a trifle lightheaded. He needed breakfast. That was the only suitable explanation for such a wretched notion to cross his mind.
“Your presence here is a secret,” he reminded her. “It is imperative it remain that way.”
She cocked her head, considering him from head to toe in a flirtatious manner that had him going hot all over. “I don’t know, Lordly. I’ve grown rather fond of that big ducal beak of yours. I’d hate to see one of my brothers make it crooked for the rest of your life.”
Lordly.
There it was again, the mocking diminutive she had lately pinned upon him. A bastardization of his title was bad enough, let alone an abbreviation of one. She was attempting to rile him again, he did not doubt.
Therefore, to spite her, he endeavored to keep his expression impassive. “You may save your childish insults, Miss Sutton. I am perfectly aware my nose is not at all overly large.”
How haughty he sounded, even to his own ears.
“Eh, don’t be such an old toast,” she said, waving her hand in an expansive gesture that was decidedly unladylike. “My brothers can likely help you with finding Aidan. You’ll be wanting to stay on their good side. Trust me.”
He had no idea what an old toast was, but he knew it could not be anything good.
“Trusting you is the last thing I will do,” he told her coolly, watching as his beloved Rosebud leapt from his bed to curl lovingly around the bare ankles of the scandalous fortune hunter before him. “Have you forgotten that is the reason for your presence here?”
The corners of her lips turned down in a delectable pout. “My imprisonment, you mean.”
The urge to kiss her was almost potent enough to bring him to his knees.
What would she do if he peeled that shirt from her body, carried her to the bed, and fucked her until noon?
No, he could not very well carry her, could he? Not with his back in its present state.
He frowned. “You are not my prisoner but my guest.”
“Doubt your rattling cove believes that,” she grumbled.
Garrick was lost. “Rattling cove?”
“Coachman,” Miss Sutton supplied. “Saw you carrying me about, he did. If you think the poor cull ain’t going to spill the scandal broth to everyone he knows, you’re more foolish than I thought.”
Her accent was slipping, he realized. Her speech had become a mixture of East End accent and London drawing room. Which meant, he suspected, that she was somehow distressed.
“I would trust Neave with my life,” he said honestly. “He is a loyal retainer.”
It was imperative a man be able to know four people in his life would not deceive him: his coachman, his butler, his valet, and his housekeeper. Everyone else—parents, siblings, wife or mistress, could betray or deceive him at any moment. It was truth that nearly all of them had, though he had yet to take a wife.
Lady Hester.
What would the sweet-tempered, angel of a woman think of him were she to see him now, lusting after a scantily clad female who was her social inferior in every way? And in his bed chamber?
As if to offer reproach, Rosebud meowed loudly.
“You’ll want me at your side when you face Hart and Wolf, if that’s who’s come,” Miss Sutton said, bending down to offer his traitorous feline a scratch atop her head. “And Lord help you if it’s Jasper and Rafe, too. Distrust me on everything else, but believe me when I tell you that. My brothers are fearsome when they are protecting their own.”
For a ridiculous moment, Garrick almost blurted that she was his, not theirs. Christ, he needed to eat something. His mind was clearly even more addled than he had previously supposed.
As if prodded by the thought, his stomach growled.
“You’ll be wanting something to eat, I expect,” she said, not bothering to pretend she had not heard the sound as any lady would do. “Put an end to your protesting, Lordly. I’m coming along whether you like it or not.”
“Very well,” he reluctantly agreed, having grown tired of arguing with her and wanting her and seeing her bare limbs on display.
To say nothing of her greedy nipples poking through her shirt…
Stop this madness, Garrick. Cease it at once.
“At long last, he shows some sense,” the vexing woman said to his cat in conspiratorial fashion.
He was not certain whether he should laugh or weep. She was talking to Rosebud, and the cursed feline was meowing as if in agreement.
“You will dress and return to the mews through the secret corridor,” he directed her instead. “Come to the front door, and you will be received.”
She straightened, a sudden pallor in her complexion, her lovely features drawn tight in a way he had never seen before. “Has it any windows to light the way?”
“Of course not, else it would not be a secret.” He searched her countenance, understanding dawning. “You have a fear of the darkness.”
At last, her odd behavior the night before made sense. There was no other explanation for the manner in which she had clutched him, pressing so near their beings had nearly merged as one, her fingernails digging so tightly into his shoulders that he was certain there would be marks if he bothered to look.
Her spine stiffened, chin tilting up in defiance. “I fear nothing.”
“I will give you a brace of candles,” he said, something within him softening. Melting just a bit. “Will that suffice?”
“I hardly need it.”
Her voice was unconvincing. It was difficult to imagine Pen Sutton being fearful of anything, let alone something as insignificant as the dark. Yet, she had to be.
What had happened to her to make her fearful of a lack of light?
And why did the question make his heart feel tight as a knot in his chest?
“Will you not tell me?” he asked, knowing it was not entirely his right, and yet wanting to understand her.
She was silent for a moment, and he expected her to continue her denial.
“My father was a tosspot, and when we angered him, he punished us children by locking us in a small, dark room. Some of us were punished more often than others. It ain’t the dark I fear. It’s the memories.”
“Christ, Pen.” He did not know what else to say.
Words eluded him. The thought of her as a young girl, locked inside a dark room as punishment, was enough to send bile up his throat.
She shook her head, the bravado she ordinarily displayed replacing the fleeting hint of vulnerability. “I don’t need your pity any more than I need your bleeding brace of candles.”
He would allow her to cling to her pride for now.
“Nonetheless, you ought to take it,” he said, striving for lightness. “No need to go about bumping into my walls.”
“I suppose not.” The hesitant smile she sent him—part gratitude, part something he could not define—hit him like a blow. “You truly ought to go before my brothers come looking for you. I will join you in scarcely any time at all.”
He nodded, tearing his gaze from hers before moving—with care, in consideration of his aching back—to the brace of candles he had promised and lighting each flame.
* * *
The urge tothieve Garrick’s sweet cat had been strong. Garrick? What was she thinking, continuing to consider him in such intimate terms? Pen heaved a sigh and inwardly chastised herself as she waited for the return of the butler who had eyed her in most suspicious fashion before offering to see if his lordship was at home.
At home.
She had bitten her tongue to keep from saying she knew his lordship was at home because she had spent the night in his bed. That would have ended badly for Lord Lordly. And for reasons Pen did not care to consider or dissect, she felt a sense of responsibility where he was concerned. If he did not wish to be gossiped about, she would protect him from it. Even if it meant finding her way through a small secret passageway with nothing but a brace of candles.
Confined spaces made her anxious.
Not as panic-stricken as the dark.
As it was, she had managed to emerge from the corridor without screaming, freezing, or bursting into tears. She considered that a victory, although she had admittedly been spurred on by images of violent clashes between her brothers and Garrick. Blood spurting from his nose. Purple bruising mottling his eye. She did not think any of them would stab him.
Being sent to rot in the hulks should prove a suitable deterrent.
Should it not?
She tapped her boot in the marbled entry hall, growing impatient. Why was she waiting here, wasting her time, when she could be within, making certain her brothers were not pummeling poor Garrick with their fists?
The butler returned, his expression as grave as ever. “His lordship will see you, Mr. Sutton.”
She hadn’t a card, for her trips to bare-knuckle bouts and her other adventures about London with Aidan had most definitely never been the proper sort. She had never needed one. The lack had caused the butler’s brow to wrinkle, and likely had been the source of her continued wait.
Pen followed the servant to what was presumably the drawing room, where her brothers and Garrick were within. The butler stood on the threshold, obscuring her view, and announced her in grim tones.
“Mr. Logan Sutton, my lord.”
Sadness trickled through Pen at hearing her brother’s name spoken aloud. How she wished it were Loge being presented to the drawing room now instead of herself. But he was long since gone to Rothisbones, having disappeared without a trace, leaving the rest of the family to carry on with heavy hearts.
The butler stepped to the side, and finally, after what seemed a lifetime of attempting to restore herself to a semblance of dress, forcing her way through the secret passage, and then arriving at the front door, she was officially paying a call upon Viscount Lindsey.
A man who was very much a stranger to her in some ways.
And a man who was very much not a stranger to her in others.
He was on his feet, looking every bit the distinguished lord despite the fact that he was dressed in day-old clothes. No one else would look upon him and know. She, however, did. Because she had spent the night in his chamber.
Their gazes met and held. For a moment, her heart ceased to beat, and then she recalled she was meant to be a gentleman.
She crossed the threshold, belatedly catching sight of her brothers. Hart and Wolf, thankfully. Jasper and Rafe were blessedly absent. Neither of her siblings appeared particularly pleased to see her, however.
Indeed, Wolf looked rather…deadly.
Oh dear.
“Mr. Sutton.”
Garrick’s voice tore her from her thoughts, and she bowed, keenly aware of the butler’s presence at her back.
“Thank you, that will be all, Perkins,” Garrick added, addressing the august servant behind her.
The drawing room door closed.
And pandemonium descended.
Hart and Wolf began shouting at once.
“I ought to skin you alive for what you’ve done.”
“You’ll be paying for taking our sister captive, you bleeding arsehole.”
She swallowed hard. Oh dear, indeed.
“Wolf, you aren’t going to skin anyone,” she hastened to say, wondering if he had brought his knives. He did possess a rather menacing collection… “And Hart, Lord Lindsey did not take me captive.”
Well, in truth, he had. Somewhat. If she had feared him, she would have fought and clawed and done everything in her power to escape him. But while he was a man who could enrage her, Garrick would never hurt her. She knew that much instinctively. No, she had known she was safe with him. He had browbeaten her into accompanying him, but a wicked part of her had not minded, regardless of how much of a fuss she had caused.
“Then how the bloody ’ell do you explain your disappearance last night?” Wolf demanded, scowling. “We didn’t receive the note hisnabs sent us until dawn when we closed the club, or we would have been here with torches in hand, ready to burn this damned house to ash.”
Wolf was furious. She had never before seen him this irate.
But just as she was about to offer further explanation, Garrick moved between herself and her angry brothers, apparently having no notion of the danger he faced. Wolf and Hart were beloved to her, but she would not wish their rage upon her most vile enemy.
“I will thank you to stop yelling at Miss Sutton, gentleman,” he said coolly. “She has done nothing to warrant your ire. I would also strongly advise against any attempts at committing arson or skinning me alive.”
His calm drawl would have made Pen laugh on any other day. But she was not certain what her brothers would do.
“Or you’ll do what, Lindsey?” Wolf demanded, his lip curling. “You may be a lord but don’t think that’s enough to keep you safe.”
“I’ll ask you again,” Hart added, “what the devil are you doing with our sister?”
Well, there were certainly some answers Garrick could give that Wolf and Hart would dislike mightily.
She sidestepped the viscount, who had been blocking her view of her siblings. Wolf and Hart were pacing the fancy drawing room like caged lions. It was just as she had feared, and she could not help but to wonder how their meeting had fared before her arrival.
“Lower your swords, all of you,” she said. “Lord Lindsey asked for my help in finding his brother. Lord Aidan has gone missing, and his lordship received a demand for ransom suggesting he’s being held by someone against his will.”
He had not precisely asked. She very much doubted the viscount ever asked permission for anything. But that was neither here nor there.
“We’ve been telling you Lord Aidan Weir was trouble from the moment he first started sniffing your skirts,” Wolf said flatly. “If he’s been taken, it would serve ’im right.”
“Don’t pay the ransom,” Hart advised. “You’ll be better off.”
Pen scowled at her brothers. “You are being terribly rude.”
Wolf’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you dressed as a nob and pretending to be Loge?”
“I was looking for Aidan as well,” she admitted.
“We were looking together,” Garrick said calmly. “If either of you has information concerning my brother, it would be greatly appreciated.”
“Why don’t you take the matter to the charleys, milord?”
“The ransom letter warned not to.” The weariness in his voice was not lost on her. “As unbelievable as it may seem, I am unaccustomed to my family members being held against their will by unknown villains.”
“None of that explains what ’appened last night,” Wolf pointed out. “You were alone with hisnabs here, were you not, Pen?”
She tried not to think about what had happened between herself and Garrick the night before for fear her brothers would spy the flush in her cheeks. “Not alone.”
Also, she was not telling a lie because they had not been alone in his chamber. Rosie had been there with them.
“Yet you spent the night here,” Hart persisted.