How the Earl Entices Page 20

  Yet she forced a smile and purred, “Perhaps I will see you later then.” When hell froze over.

  As she slowly descended the stairs, she turned back to glance over her shoulder. A look that Patton pompously thought was for him.

  Ross was gone.

  Chapter 20

  Ross sauntered as quickly as he dared up the second flight of stairs and out of sight of Patton and the rest of the ambassador’s guards. He would have laughed to himself at the performance Grace had just put on if watching her with Patton hadn’t infuriated him so. When this night was over, they were going to have a long talk about what kind of distractions were proper. And how she was never again to draw a man’s attention to her breasts.

  “Unless it’s mine,” he growled.

  He headed down the hall to search for the study. He opened the first door—a bedroom. He moved on to the next.

  “You there!” A man called out from the other end of the hall, where he’d just stepped out from the backstairs. “This floor is off limits. You need to return to the party.”

  But Ross ignored him and opened another door.

  “I said you need to leave. Now.”

  Ross muttered a curse. “I’m looking for a bottle of cognac.” He flashed a friendly smile and flung open another door. His heart skipped. Wentworth’s study. “And none of that watered down grape juice they’re passing off downstairs as brandy.”

  “Stop where you are!” The man was enormous, all muscle and gritty brawn, and he drew his hands into fists as he started toward Ross.

  Ross’s smile faded. “No need for violence. I’m only searching for a good drink.”

  But the man kept coming, charging at him like a bull.

  “All right, all right! I’ll go.” He turned around and started back down the hall toward the stairs, but he could hear the man’s approaching steps as they grew nearer. Every inch of him alert, he waited until the guard was just behind—

  He snatched up a silver candlestick holder from the narrow table beside him, pivoted, and swung.

  The hard blow hit the man on the side of his head and sent him spinning. He staggered back against the wall. Then his eyes rolled up in his head, and he sank to the floor, unconscious.

  Ross bent down to grab him by his arms. “I was wrong,” he muttered through gritted teeth of exertion as he pulled the large man inside the nearest room. “Apparently, there was a need for violence after all.”

  After tying him up with a length of cord from the drapes, with knots not nearly as good as Grace’s, Ross left him there and returned to the study, taking the candlestick with him and lighting it on the hallway wall sconce. With a glance over his shoulder, he slipped inside, closing and locking the door after himself.

  He set the candle on the desk and began to search the room. Each drawer in the desk, then the side tables…but finding nothing. There were too many books on the shelves to go through them all, and no point since Wentworth most likely owned them only for show. So he returned to the desk and searched it again, this time removing every drawer completely and inspecting each from all sides before returning it.

  He replaced the last drawer and bit back a harsh curse, running a hand through his hair as he stepped back to survey the desk. Frustration boiled inside him. He had to find that diary, or every struggle during the past year would come to nothing.

  Worse. He’d entangled Grace into his mess, and there was no way to protect her if he was discovered. He hadn’t lied to her. If he was caught tonight, so was she. That was the very last way she should be repaid for helping him since he crawled ashore in Sea Haven. For God’s sake, she’d sewn up his wounds even after he’d taken her captive and before she’d arrived at the notion of having his help in gaining her son’s rightful inheritance. When she’d had the opportunity to turn him over, she’d not taken it. Even tonight she didn’t need to risk herself in order to help him, yet she was doing just that. He’d been wrong to ever assume that her involvement was only mercenary when her own safety was the last thing she’d been worried about.

  Being an ambassador had once been all that he’d wanted from his life. But now—

  He wanted Grace.

  The thought startled him, but the truth of it was undeniable. He wanted her. All of her. Her courage and determination, brilliance and sharp wit, competence and confidence—she was all that every other woman wasn’t. When this fight was over, when he was exonerated and the traitors stopped, he would finally claim his waltz with her. And more.

  But now he had to focus. Giving up on the desk, he scanned the room. That diary had to be in here somewhere. Had to be! Wentworth would keep it near him at all times. But where?

  His eyes landed on a narrow side table pushed against the wall between the two tall windows. There were no drawers in it, and the underside of it was clean because he’d already checked it. Yet the wood grain on its front…warped. Significantly. He crossed to the piece and ran his hand over the front panel. Smooth, but with a telltale dip where the grain changed direction, indicating the joining of two separate pieces in an attempt to hide it. No furniture maker of any quality would make a piece with a flaw like this. And Wentworth certainly wouldn’t have paid good money for it. Unless…

  He pressed his fingers along the edge where the tabletop met the base, feeling for any kind of mechanism—

  His fingertip snagged on a piece of wood just barely protruding from the flushed edge. A smile crooked his lips. He pressed it, and a secret compartment sprung open.

  His pulse pounded as he reached inside and pulled out a sheath of papers. He scanned them. Not the diary he sought, but a list of names and bits of information about each man. With a jolt, he realized what he held in his hands—the list of men working with Wentworth to trade secrets to the French, along with information that Wentworth could use to blackmail them. Or take them down with him if any of them ever decided to confess.

  He folded the papers and tucked them inside his breast pocket, then closed the secret compartment and muttered a low curse. These papers were helpful, but he needed the diary. Without it, his only evidence for placing Wentworth in Le Havre was a single signature. Not nearly enough to prove the ambassador’s guilt and his innocence.

  Finding no more hidden spaces in the table, he turned back to the room to begin a new search, and his gaze landed on a matching table sitting between two bookshelves on the other side of the room. He offered up a silent prayer that it also held a matching secret compartment, and matching evidence of treason.

  As he started forward, a shout went up from the hallway.

  The guard had been found. More noise, more shouts, now followed by the sounds of running feet and doors rapidly opening and closing—

  Christ. He was caught.

  With a longing glance at the table, he ran to the window and threw up the sash, just as the men reached the study. The door handle rattled, then fists pounded against the locked door as Ross slipped outside onto the narrow brick ledge supporting the window casement, two stories above the side garden. He eased down the sash and pressed himself flat against the house at the side of the window, out of sight. The toes of his Hessians jutted out over the edge into thin air.

  “Wonderful,” he muttered sarcastically as he scanned the building’s flat façade.

  There was no ledge connecting the windows that he could inch his way down and use to escape through another room. And of no use even if there had been. Wentworth’s men would be searching every room on this floor and standing guard at both ends of the hall, preventing escape down either set of stairs. No, there was no way back into the house, and no way back into the party to fetch Grace. She was on her own now.

  So was he, with no means of escape. He couldn’t help a dark laugh at the picture he’d create when dawn came and he was discovered, a masked man standing on a window ledge two stories above London. He couldn’t think of anything worse, unless fate decided to punish him further by making it rain.

  Rain. A desperate idea str
uck, and he slid his gaze to the side, holding his breath and praying…

  He let out a heaving sigh of relief at the downspout that ran along the side of the house, from the roof all the way to the cistern in the cellar. Carefully, he inched his way to the edge of the casement ledge. His hand shook as he reached out to grab the downspout to climb to the ground. Suicide, most likely. But he had no choice. If he stayed here, death was certain.

  He glanced at the ground in the darkness, thirty feet below him, and muttered, “Better to die in a flowerbed than by the hangman’s noose.”

  But that sentiment gave little comfort as he swung over onto the downspout. The metal groaned beneath his weight, and he froze. Please, God, let the fastenings hold! After several deep breaths, with his hands gripped around the metal pipe and his feet pressed against it like a vise, he slowly lowered himself, yard by terrifying yard. The metal groaned and squealed as he climbed down as carefully yet as quickly as he could.

  Above him in the study, he heard the door break open. The jamb splintered with a loud shattering as the lock popped and the door was flung open. Shouts and running boots filtered through the window into the night.

  Christ. He moved quickly now, half-sliding down the downspout to move as far away into the darkness below as possible before the men discovered his escape route. But the metal length groaned beneath his weight and jerked sideways.

  The last bracket tore loose from the brick. The pipe bowed out from the wall with a loud pop.

  Ross jumped. He fell the last six feet into the side garden, his boots hitting the ground and throwing him forward. He tucked his shoulder and rolled, stopping just inches from a large blackthorn bush whose thorns were so big that he could see the thumb-sized spears shining in the moonlight.

  He climbed to his feet, brushing the dirt and grass off his shoulders.

  A surprised cry sounded behind him. He spun around. Among the shadows beside the house, a woman leaned back against the brick with her skirts bunched up around her waist. In front of her, staring at Ross with the same shocked expression, stood a man with one hand down her bodice and the other between her legs, his breeches down around his knees.

  For a moment, none of them moved, all three simply staring in surprise. Then Ross cleared his throat and called out, “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

  He nodded a polite goodnight and sauntered away toward the street at the front of the house, leaving the startled couple staring after him.

  Grace nervously tapped her fingers against the champagne flute and once more glanced toward the marble stairs. A half hour had passed, and there was still no sign of Ross. She waited in the stair hall and pretended to enjoy her glass of champagne while her heart ticked off the seconds growing closer to midnight.

  Ross had told her to leave, but still she’d stayed as the clock grew closer to the unmasking. Leaving him behind was unbearable. So was the thought that he might have been caught, that even now he was being led away by the authorities. That she might never see him again.

  Her hand trembled as she raised the flute to her lips. A drink was the last thing she wanted, with the champagne tasting like vinegar on her tongue. But as she tilted back her head to sip, her eyes darted to the gold clock hanging on the wall, once more surreptitiously checking the time—

  Five minutes to midnight. Panic squeezed her chest. Oh God, where was Ross?

  But she didn’t dare linger any longer. If her mask came off and someone recognized her, it would mean more than the end for Ross’s burglary—it could very well mean the end for her and Ethan. Even now, so close to obtaining the information that would exonerate Ross, she couldn’t put her son in jeopardy. With no other choice, she turned to leave the party.

  A hand clasped her elbow from behind, stopping her.

  Relief poured from her in a long sigh, and her shoulders eased down. Thank God. Ross had been delivered safely back to her. And just in the nick of time.

  With a bright smile, she turned. “I thought you’d—”

  Patton. The glass slipped from her fingers.

  He caught it before it could fall and smash on the floor. Handing it off to one of the passing footmen who were busily bringing in dozens of trays of champagne for the midnight toast, he smiled at her in amusement. Amused…when what pounded through her was sheer terror.

  “It’s midnight,” he told her, wrapping her arm around his and leading her not toward the front door and escape but toward the blue drawing room and further into the house. “My watch is done, and now I can enjoy the party for the rest of the evening.” His eyes darted toward her breasts, and she forced back a shudder and threw a desperate glance toward the stairs. Dear God, where was Ross? He added in a murmur, “And enjoy the guests.”

  She remembered to use a fake Italian accent as she gestured back toward the door. “But I was leav—”

  “Lingering right below where I’ve been standing all evening.” Arrogance seeped from him at the idea that she’d been waiting for him. What would the egotistical fop say if he knew she was waiting there for a far better man? “Sending all those half-veiled glances up the stairs in my direction.”

  “I would never be so desperate.” The only desperation she felt was to flee.

  He chuckled, not releasing her arm even when she tried to pull it away.

  Instead of leading her into the drawing room, he pulled her aside into an arched hall running alongside the room. When she turned to face him in indignation, he stepped forward, forcing her backward with his body as he closed the distance between them and maneuvering her behind a marble column and thick growth of potted bamboo. Cleverly hidden from view of the party.

  “I would be very happy to entertain you now, my lady,” he drawled, tracing his fingertip along the edge of her low neckline.

  “Contessa,” she corrected haughtily, smacking his hand away. She trembled, unable to do anything to defend herself except for being as icy and insulting as possible in an attempt to drive him away. Because any cry for help would reveal her presence. And Ross’s.

  “Contessa, of course,” he repeated with a smile that was anything but apologetic. He lifted her hand to his lips and mumbled, purposefully low and fast, thinking she wouldn’t understand, “Doesn’t matter what a woman calls herself once you’re buried inside her pussy.”

  The unintended anguish of his comment sliced into her, and she forced out, “Pardon?”

  “I said,” he murmured as he removed her glove and brought her hand to his lips, to suck at her fingers, “that tonight I would very much enjoy a private party.”

  Unable any longer to force back a shudder, she yanked her hand away. “I have grown bored of your party.”

  When she tried to step around him, he blocked her way. He audaciously trailed a finger from her throat down between her breasts.

  “I’ll give you exactly what you need to keep the boredom at bay, Contessa.” He leaned forward and whispered hotly in her ear as his hand continued to draw a line down her body and across her belly toward the space between her legs, “Una bella scopata.”

  That Italian she knew, thanks to the sailors in Sea Haven. “You arrogant—”

  Noise erupted around them. Shouts and cheers echoed through the house as the clocks’ bells tolled midnight. The orchestra sent up rounds of fanfare, and fireworks sizzled and boomed over the square fronting the house.

  “Midnight,” he explained loudly over the racket. “Time for your unmasking, contessa.” He lifted his hand toward her head. “Then the real party can begin.”

  “No!”

  He grabbed the ribbon tie at the back of her head and stripped the mask away before she could stop him.

  He gaped at her, wide-eyed. Startled by her scar, he stepped back. “What the hell—”

  In that moment of confusion, she shoved at him with all her might and sent him staggering backward. Then she ran.

  She pushed through the crowd pressing into the stair hall. In her hurry, her shoulder hit one of the footmen and s
ent a tray of champagne glasses crashing onto the floor. Everyone turned to look, and panic consumed her. Covering her cheek with her hand, she shoved her way through the crowd, into the entrance hall, and out the front door. Fireworks rained in booming showers over the square, lighting the night in flashes of red and blue. Her chest burned as she gasped for air, yet she ran on, stumbling along the footpath in her desperation to flee.

  “Grace!”

  She halted and snapped her head up, straining to hear anything else but the roar of blood rushing through her ears.

  A man hurried toward her from the dozens of people gathered in front of the square, from the hundreds more now emptying from the house to watch the fireworks—

  “Christopher!”

  His face was set hard beneath the dark shadows as he approached, made eerily demonic by the flashes of red and blue. But this devil was her savior.

  He grabbed her arm and hurried her toward the line of carriages waiting in front of the house. “This way.”

  She craned her neck to search for Ross. “Where’s your brother?”

  He yanked open the carriage door and placed her inside.

  “Christopher, where is Ross?” she demanded, her voice rising with fear.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been guarding the front entrance all night and haven’t seen him come out of the house yet.” He shut the door and shouted up to the driver. “Chelsea,” he ordered. “And protect her with your life.”

  Ellsworth’s driver nodded and flipped the ribbons, sending the team forward. The carriage rolled away from the house, quickly picking up speed as it moved through the dark streets of Mayfair and carried her away into the night.

  “Please God,” she prayed as she squeezed her eyes shut and rested her head back against the squabs. If Ross wasn’t with Christopher— She shook her head, unwilling to contemplate the worst. “Please let him be all right…because he’s a good man. Because he’s a hero…”

  Because I love him.