Gayle Wilson - My Lady's Dare

He took his hand away, holding it by force of habit in front of him. The Stygian blackness of the alleyway, an odoriferous cobblestoned ribbon which followed the left bank of the Seine, prevented him from being able to see either blood or fingers.

Wiping the moisture on his cloak, Dare pulled the glove back on, again using his teeth to finish the job. He was still listening to the sounds of the hunt, ready to spring to action if his pursuers approached. He tugged his cravat higher around his throat, hoping it would catch the blood.

Eventually the searchers would bring torches to try to find any trace of their prey as the hunt fanned out along the riverbank. He couldn’t afford to leave a tell-tale trail of blood by which they could track him. Although he himself might be back in England by the time those droplets were discovered, the man in whose house he would take shelter tonight would not be.

And the Earl of Dare had a hard-earned reputation for protecting his associates. Anyone who didn’t wouldn’t last long in this business. The line of the earl’s mouth slanted suddenly. Despite his predicament, he was amused by that thought. Actually, no one lasted long in his business, no matter the care he took.

He had certainly been pushing his luck tonight. Of course, that was something he had always done. His brother Ian accused him of needing the thrill this dangerous game gave him. The narrow escapes. The occasional pursuit. Perhaps his brother was right, he admitted, his lips tilting again. After all, Ian usually was. Especially about his siblings.

Dare stepped away from the shadows of the building, moving with the graceful stealth of a hunting cat, the hilt of his sword still clutched in his hand. He carried a loaded pistol as well, but it was the blade that had saved his life tonight. As it had on more than one occasion. The sound of a shot in a Parisian street would undoubtedly be investigated by the authorities, but the whisper of a rapier, as quick and deadly as an adder’s strike, had never given away his location.

Once he had put some distance between himself and the yard of the house where he had left the dead man, the earl began to hurry. He moved almost soundlessly, his booted feet running lightly over the rough and broken stones. His eyes examined every patch of darkness that loomed ahead, but gradually the noise of the soldiers faded away behind him.

It wouldn’t be long before they found the body of the man he had killed, however. And when they did, he had no doubt that they would redouble their efforts. If only his famous luck would hold a little longer, he thought, recognizing that he was nearing his destination. Then the French would again be disappointed in their efforts to capture him.

Eventually, the earl slipped into a low stone doorway, ducking his head to accommodate his height to an entrance that had been constructed three centuries before. This area was one of the oldest in the city, the buildings still partially enclosed by the medieval wall.

Even without light, it was obvious he was in the right place. The scent in the low room was so strong it was almost taste. Dare stood a moment, his nose raised like a hound’s, breathing in the thick air, richly pungent with hops and malt.

“Running late are you, my lord?” a voice asked. The accent was English, broadened by the speaker’s obvious Yorkshire heritage. “I was beginning to get worried.”

“Someone tried to slice my gullet,” Dare explained, closing the heavy door by which he had just entered and throwing the iron bolt across it. “I was forced to…dissuade him.”

As soon as the lock shot home, he heard the sound of a flint, and the pale, wavering thread of fire it had produced gradually became a glow. Then slowly, out of the shadows beside the strengthening light, a face, Mephistophelianlike, floated into view.

Unlike the voice that had preceded them, its features were nondescript, as easily French or Italian as British: dark eyes, an undistinguished jut of nose, a wide, generous mouth, arranged in a grin. And all of them surmounted by mouse-brown hair, which had been tied back in a neat queue.

“Oh, you ain’t gone and bloodied your linen, have you, my lord?” the earl’s valet asked plaintively. “You’ve no idea what a time I have with bloodstains. And you would be wearing one of our new cravats.”

“I’ve almost been beheaded, Ned, and all you can worry about is the state of my cravat,” the earl said, laughing. He slipped the woolen cloak off his shoulders and threw it carelessly over a convenient cask.

“It’s not just the linen that’s the problem,” Ned Harper said. “It’s the lace as well. Hard to come by now that Nappy’s got the continent tied up.”

“Perhaps we might shop for a yard or two before we leave Paris,” Dare suggested politely.

He crossed the room to where his valet was standing and took the brimming mug held out to him. The earl raised the cup and drank down its contents in one long quaff, then lowered it to look into his servant’s eyes.

“He wasn’t there,” Dare said softly, and watched the laughter fade from Ned Harper’s face.

“Damn,” the smaller man said feelingly.

“Bloody right,” agreed the earl. “He wasn’t there, and the gendarmes were.”

There was a long silence as his valet considered the information. “Someone told them you were coming.”

“There was only one man who knew that.”

“He’d never talk,” Harper declared with conviction.

“Anyone can be made to talk,” the earl said softly. “There are things which may be done to a man….” The words faded, and again the Earl of Dare’s eyes met those of his friend. “Anyone can be made to talk,” he finished simply.

Harper nodded, his gaze still locked on the earl’s classically handsome face. The grin with which he had greeted his master was gone. Perhaps he was thinking, as Dare was, of the terrible things that were done to prisoners in France today. The same unspeakable tortures that had once, a long time ago, been carried out in the bowels of England’s own dungeons.

“Then…we have to get him out,” Harper said. “Out of Paris. Out of the country.”

“Indeed,” the earl said, his eyes, made sapphire by the lamplight, were no longer focused on his valet’s face. They were gazing instead, unseeing, into the heart of the flame.

“What will you do?” Harper asked.

“First, we shall have to find him. Which may take some time.” The earl’s voice faltered again as his imagination visited the prison where his friend would be held while his enemies tried to extract information from him. Information about his contacts in espionage, such as the earl himself.

“And time, Ned…” Dare continued after a long silence, his voice very soft. “Time is now a luxury we no longer have.”

London, three nights later

“If all goes according to plan, my dear, we shall have a very special guest tonight,” Henri Bonnet said, smiling with undisguised satisfaction. “One to whom I wish you to be especially attentive.”

Elizabeth Carstairs’ eyes lifted to the reflection of her employer’s in the mirror above her dressing table. She said nothing, however, and after a moment she returned her attention to the task of darkening the pale lashes above her blue eyes.

The Frenchman strode angrily across the room and caught her chin in his fingers, roughly turning her to face him. “A very special guest,” he said again, each word sharp and distinct. “Do you understand me, Elizabeth?”

“Of course,” the Englishwoman said. Neither her face nor her voice expressed dismay at the gambler’s treatment of her.

For the past two years, Elizabeth Carstairs had had little control over any aspect of her life except her demeanor. And she had decided from the beginning that Henri Bonnet would never be allowed to know what she was thinking. Or feeling.

Still gripping her chin painfully, Bonnet turned her face toward the light of the lamp on her dressing table. He examined it critically before he dipped one finger into a pot of rouge, which was standing open on the dresser. He added more color to her lips and then to her cheeks, blending the rouge into the small amount she had already applied.

He stepped back, his head tilted, still assessing. Then he touched the sleeve of the blue gown she was wearing, flicking its edging of lace dismissingly. “And wear the red, I think, rather than this. We are entertaining someone important, Elizabeth. Someone very important. And I’m counting on you, of course, to do your part,” he added softly.

Without waiting to see if she would obey his command to change—because he knew that she would—the gambler turned, leaving her alone in her bedroom. Her eyes returned to the reflection in the mirror. She watched her lips tighten in anger, and then using the tips of her fingers, she scrubbed at the rouge, trying to remove it from her cheeks.

After a moment, the movement of her fingers stopped, and she leaned forward, staring intently into the eyes of the woman in glass. Slowly she shook her head, a single negative movement. Then she rose, her fingers working over the buttons down the back of her bodice, preparing to put on the dress the gambler had instructed her to wear. Her lips were set, her eyes cold, and after she had changed, she never looked again into the mirror.

“So good of you to honor us with your company, my Lord Dare,” Henri Bonnet said.

The Frenchman bowed from the waist. His left hand, graced by a brilliantly faceted emerald ring, made a sweeping gesture toward a large gaming table, which had been set up in one of the private salons of his elegant London hell.

There were two empty chairs at the table. The other four were occupied by gentlemen of the earl’s acquaintance, who had obviously been awaiting his arrival. Dare’s gaze skimmed almost insultingly over his host, not even acknowledging his bow. He considered the group at the table, his eyes resting briefly on the face of each man.

“I believe you know everyone,” the Frenchman added, his tone expressing no displeasure that the earl had failed to respond to his effusive greeting. However rude the earl might be, they all knew the gambler couldn’t afford to offend so wealthy a patron.

All conversation at the table had come to a halt with the earl’s arrival, and every eye was focused on the figure poised in the doorway. Despite the fact that he had reached his London town house less than an hour ago, Dare knew there was nothing to criticize in his appearance. With Harper’s assistance, and according to the reassuring reflection in his mirror, he had again achieved the sartorial elegance for which Valentine Sinclair, the Earl of Dare was justly famous. Or perhaps justly infamous, he thought, mocking his own carefully constructed reputation.

It was said that some of the younger members of the beau monde had once tried to estimate the cost of the clothing Dare had worn to some court occasion, even going so far as to place wagers on the amount in the betting books. Despite the fact that he was known for indulging his expensive taste to the utmost, the sums Dare heard mentioned in that incident hadn’t even approached the amount he had actually spent.

And spent for a good cause, he acknowledged, bowing formally toward the Duke of Pendlebrooke, the only man present who outranked him. Dare’s attention to fashion was part of his ongoing masquerade. As were most of his excesses, including the one he would engage in tonight.

“Gentlemen,” Dare said, inclining his head to the men at the table, “I bid you good evening. And offer my abject apologies to have kept you waiting. My man was singularly inept tonight.”