A Wicked Liaison Read online

  He could hear the clink of the china as Patrick picked up the teacup and began to drink it himself. He glanced over his shoulder. His valet was balancing his hip on the corner of his master’s desk, and helping himself to a scone to go with his tea. He glared.

  Patrick shrugged. ‘The tea is getting cold, and you would only get butter on your hands if you had a scone. I will get you more, when you have opened the lock. So, tell me, does the dowager have a lady’s maid?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. Of course she does. And stop eating my breakfast.’

  ‘Tell me about her.’

  ‘I have been telling you about her for years.’ Although he couldn’t help but smile at the memory.

  ‘Not the duchess. The maid.’

  ‘She is just an ordinary maid. Not much in evidence, when I am there. Constance generally sends her to bed.’

  ‘The dowager is a most understanding and generous mistress, to be sure. I look forward to meeting her, again. And her maid, as well. Whose name is?’

  ‘Susan,’ Tony responded.

  ‘And I suppose she is old, pinch-faced, and sour tempered.’

  ‘She appears to me to be a most pleasant girl of twenty, blonde, somewhat plump and quite attractive.’

  Patrick offered a toast with his teacup. ‘To the fair Susan. Now that things are settled, and the duchess knows who you are, I can hope but to spend a happy future, below stairs with a beautiful blonde.’

  Tony swallowed and renewed his efforts with the lock. ‘Well. About that…’

  ‘You haven’t told her. Have you?’

  ‘We have been rather busy.’

  Patrick poured another cup of tea. ‘In the past week, you have spent more time in her company than you have in all of the previous thirty years.’

  ‘But I would have to have been a fool to have spent it talking, Patrick. Apparently, the late duke was neglectful of his marital duties. And the duchess wishes to make up for lost time. I am happy to oblige, although I am near to exhaustion. Once the novelty of my visits wears off, we will have time to chat about old times. But until that time…Well, I’ll be damned.’

  The locked turned under his hand, and the door to the safe swung open.

  ‘I have done it.’ He stared from the lock to Patrick and back to the lock. ‘I have picked a Bramah.’

  Patrick stared over his shoulder at the open safe, and patted him on the back. ‘Well done, sir. Do you mean to try the challenge lock in the Bramah Company window, next? You could claim the two hundred guineas.’

  Tony sat on the edge of the desk. ‘I cannot very well tell them it has been done. They’ll want to know how I managed it. And then they will change the lock to make it impossible again.’ He reached forward to touch the open door, as though he expected it to be an illusion. ‘And worse yet, they’ll wonder why a gentleman, who is not a locksmith by trade or by hobby, had reason to try.’ He laughed to himself. ‘I am the man that beat Bramah. But I cannot tell anyone, or I will not be able to use what I have learned.’

  Patrick nodded in sympathy. ‘But you can use the information now, can’t you? Against Barton?’

  Tony stared at the open safe. ‘I certainly hope so. If the man ever leaves his house, I mean to try.’

  Tony leaned against the trunk of the tree that had become his evening home. He had spent three nights, perched like a bird in front of Barton’s house, watching the man sit in his study until almost midnight, only to be replaced by a servant, who was left to sleep in the chair by the desk. Tony had returned to Constance’s rooms each night, and let her soothe the frustration away, only to see the process repeated again the next night.

  Barton must know he was watching. The guard upon the things was obvious enough, and all carried out in plain view of the window. So it was left to him to find a way to force Barton from cover, or the pattern could play out indefinitely.

  Tony glanced back at the house, in frustration. To be so close to the plates, and finally in a position to have another go at the lock, only to be thwarted…

  The room was empty.

  He stared again. The lights were on, and the room was empty. He shifted his position in the tree to view it from another angle. There was no sign of life in the study.

  His pulse quickened.

  The front door of the house opened, and Barton appeared on the front step and paused, almost dramatically. He looked in the direction of Tony’s tree and made a grand, welcoming gesture towards the house, before signalling to a servant to bring the carriage around.

  Tony sat perfectly still, straddling his branch as the carriage accepted its owner and drove away. The bastard had known he was there, and known his location as well. And he was leaving the house in plain sight and daring Tony to enter.

  It was a trap, of course. But an irresistible one. Barton knew, and was taunting him.

  Tony considered. If he was wise rather than clever, he would head away from the danger, and not towards. But he was tired of sitting in trees and trying to wait the man out. Now or never, then.

  He dropped to the ground and made his way stealthily across the grounds to the ornamental drainpipe at the corner of the house that had served as ladder on his last entry. He rattled it, examining the areas nearest the ground for loosened bolts. It seemed secure, and so he began his ascent, working up the first flight, and the next, to the level of the window he sought.

  Only to slip rapidly down. He’d dropped almost ten feet, and very nearly lost his grip before regaining his hold.

  The bastard had greased the metal. Tony grinned through gritted teeth. If he had been careless, other than merely rash, he might have fallen, as Barton had intended.

  He examined the stone front of the house. A more difficult climb, but not impossible. Clinging to the pipe with his legs, he pulled gloves from his pockets to cover the grease on his hands. Then he renewed his grip and reached out with a leg, finding a toe-hold in the stone of the house. And then a hand hold. And so began his ascent again.

  It was unlikely that Barton would guess his route and lay another trap, but Tony felt carefully as he went for loosened stones or chiselled mortar. He was progressing nicely, within an arm’s length of the ledge beneath the window. He reached, grasped, and felt the pain before his fingers had fully closed on the bricks. When he pulled his hand away it was followed by a shower of broken glass.

  He shook his hand to dislodge the shard that had poked through the palm of his glove, thanking God that the leather had taken the majority of the damage, and then reached out to brush the area clear, so that he might proceed.

  An excellent effort, Barton. But not quite good enough. He examined the window for traps before opening it. It was mercifully clear and unlatched. Perhaps the next snare waited inside, since Barton did not think the window worthy of his effort. Tony made a quick circuit of the lit room before setting to work on the safe. No servants concealed behind furniture or curtains. And the key had been left on the inside of the door, as though he were invited to lock it, if he wished to work in privacy.

  He turned the key in the door, and, as an afterthought, pushed a chair under the door handle as an additional safeguard. Then he set to work on the safe.

  Tony tried to ignore the creeping flesh at the back of his neck. There was something wrong. He had expected the traps. But there should have been more of them. Aside from the unpickable nature of the lock, which was proceeding rather nicely, he thought. There had to be something that Barton knew, that he did not. The man would not relinquish the prize so easily, if he thought Tony could make it into the room. There must be something he was not considering, then. The thought nagged at him, as he shifted the pick in his hand to catch the next slider. Barton could not have concealed the plates on his person before leaving. They were not huge, but too large to slip into a coat pocket. He would not leave something so precious unguarded, would he?

  And then the thought hit him. Barton might leave the plates unguarded to go to something he wanted more.

&nb
sp; Tony had left Constance. Unprotected.

  Even as he thought it, he felt the pick slip home to move the last slider. With a slight turn of his wrist, he opened the lock and the door to the safe swung wide.

  He reached into the opening.

  There were no plates within.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Constance was waiting in her sitting room until it was late enough to go to bed. Her life was falling into a familiar pattern, now that Tony was part of it. She would nap in the afternoon, and have dinner, alone. She then sent the servants to bed early and spent the rest of the evening reading before the fire until almost midnight. Then she would find her own way to her room.

  Shortly afterwards, her lover would come, and they would pass the hours until dawn.

  Tonight, she had chosen Byron to keep her company until bedtime. She smiled and closed her eyes. When she had asked Tony to read to her, he had looked into her eyes and recited the poems from memory.

  If she was not careful, she would become quite spoiled by his attentions. When the time came to return to reality, she would remember that Tony’s behaviour was an aberration of character, and a sign of the minimal depth of their relationship. Men might spout poetry to their mistresses, but never to their wives.

  But it was lovely, all the same. ‘So lovely,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes, you are.’ When she opened her eyes, Jack Barton was standing in the doorway.

  She stood up and backed away, until she felt her shoulders bump the wall behind her. ‘How did you get into my home?’

  He smiled at her, as always. ‘You gave me your key.’

  ‘Only because you forced me to. And Tony got it back for me.’

  ‘Tony.’ Barton sniffed in dismissal. ‘He is not much of a thief if he does not realise that keys can be copied. I let him take the one, and kept the duplicate, assuming rightly that I might need it later.’

  ‘Get out. I shall ring for the servants.’

  ‘I would not advise that.’ Barton pulled a pistol from his pocket, and pointed it in her direction.

  ‘Go ahead and shoot. You would not dare,’ she said and started for the bell pull.

  ‘Not you,’ he replied. ‘But I will shoot the first one through the door, if you ring for help. If you remember my last visit, you know I am capable of it.’

  Her hand faltered before it reached the pull.

  Barton nodded. ‘Very good. You must agree, it is better if we remain alone. And since you have dismissed the staff for the evening, they will not disturb us.’

  ‘But we will not be alone for long,’ she threatened. ‘I am expecting a guest.’

  ‘Anthony Smythe?’ Barton shook his head in disappointment. ‘I doubt he will be troubling us again. It was very simple, in the end, to beat your lover. It is a pity that I could not be there to see him fail. But I needed to be away from the house, to lure him in.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Constance felt a chill.

  ‘The minute I was away, I have no doubt that he rushed into the house, ready to search the study. If he made it past the traps I set for him without falling to his death, he is still in for a nasty shock. The safe he has been trying to open for the last several weeks is, to the best of my knowledge, empty. I have never had reason or ability to open it. It was left by the previous owner of the house. For all I know, the man took the key to the grave with him. If he has not found them already, I doubt that your Mr Smythe will have sense to intuit the location of the things he is looking for.

  ‘I fear, darling, that in his initial excitement, he may have forgotten all about you.’

  Constance tried not to imagine Tony, dangling unsteadily from a ledge or lying in a broken heap at the base of Barton’s house. He had made it into the house. She must believe that he had survived, if she meant to keep her wits about her. ‘I doubt he is so easy to beat as all that. He will come to my aid when he realises that you have tricked him.’

  ‘But if your vulnerability occurs to him later, he will come rushing back here, breakneck, to rescue you. He enters your room through the window, does he not?’

  She stared at him, keeping her expression a blank.

  ‘Oh, come now. There are no secrets left between us. I have seen the ivy that leads right to your room. I doubt an agile climber could resist such an easy path. Now, where was I?

  ‘I have left him my plans for the evening. When he realises that I mean to have you while he is chasing after nothing, he will come rushing back to this house, to the bedroom, where he expects to find us. I will be waiting…’ he gestured with the pistol in his hand ‘…to rescue you from the intruder, bent on entering your room. One shot, as he is framed in the window. He will die from the bullet, or the fall, or a combination of the two.’

  ‘It will be murder. And I will tell anyone who will listen.’

  ‘I doubt anyone will, Constance. And even if they do, you might think before you speak. We will be in your room, together. There will be no question as to why I am there. It would be better, for you, should the world think that Smythe was attempting to rob you. If it appears you were entertaining two gentlemen, you will be the talk of the town.’

  The book of poems slipped from her hands and dropped to the floor.

  ‘And you will want me to be free of prosecution. You will need my protection for quite some time, I think. If I am in jail for murder, or worse, you will gain nothing by it but revenge. Your reputation will be in tatters. You will not see another penny out of your idiot nephew, for he will cut you from the family for the disgrace.

  ‘On the other hand, if I am free, I will take care of you, just as I have always promised. We may have to leave the country, at least for a time. My business is not going quite so well as I’d hoped. But we will have the comfort of each other.’

  Constance felt something snap, deep inside her. This was not how her life was to end. She was not some pawn to be passed from man to man and abandoned as they chose. She could not very well sit waiting for a rescue that might never come. Suppose Tony was dead, as Barton hoped. Or worse yet, on his way to her window so that she could watch him shot before her eyes and disgraced as a burglar.

  She would not let it happen. If anyone was to be shot tonight, it would not be Tony.

  Barton gestured with the gun.

  ‘We will go to your room, and wait.’

  ‘I suppose I have no choice,’ she said.

  ‘We have been over this before, Constance.’

  ‘If I submit willingly to you, will you spare Anthony Smythe?’

  Barton laughed. ‘That offer is no longer available to you. What transpires now is a matter between gentlemen. You need not concern yourself with it.’

  ‘It is not the act of a gentleman to shoot an unsuspecting man.’

  He smiled. ‘It is plain, Constance, that you are trying to prolong the inevitable. You have no need to be nervous, you know. I have every intention of being a gentle and courteous lover. Fine things should be savoured, not devoured.’

  There he went again, referring to her as a thing. Not for very much longer, she hoped. Any minute, Tony would be here to put a stop to it.

  Or he would not, and she would have to act for herself.

  Barton reached across the table to stroke her hand. ‘And you are fine indeed. Your skin is soft, your eyes are bright…’

  Her teeth were good, and her coat glossy. Soon he would be extolling her good wind and her ability to take jumps at the gallop. Tony never wasted half so much time on pretty words. And yet she had no doubt that he found her beautiful. She felt the anger in her, rising to push out the fear.

  ‘I will take great pleasure in loving you…’

  And what was she to take from the experience? At least Tony did not blather on about how much he would enjoy being with her, although he clearly did. He seemed most concerned with how she felt about it. This man was obsessed with bedding her, nearly insane with it.

  ‘Come, let me show you.’ He rose and offered her his hand, an
d gestured towards the door with his gun.

  She looked at the hand held out to her. Tony might be dead already. And if that was true, there would be no last-minute rescue. But if he was dead, then it did not matter, one way or the other, what happened to her. She no longer cared, so there was nothing to be afraid of.

  She looked at Barton. He had seemed so frightening, but he was a pathetic creature who could think no further than the bed in her room. She knew his weakness, and she could exploit it to her advantage.

  ‘Very well.’ She took his hand and he escorted her towards the stairs, a pace behind, with the gun in his pocket. She turned as they were halfway up. ‘And you intend to be gentle?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She allowed a small disappointed sigh to escape her lips.

  Behind her, on the steps, she heard the slight hesitation in his step.

  She paused again. ‘Robert was always very careful, when we were together. I assumed that it was the fault of age. Tony, as well, treated me as though I were made of glass.’ She turned to look back at Barton. ‘Some day, perhaps I will find someone who is not afraid to give me what I want.’ She glanced back at him and saw the avaricious glimmer in his eyes.

  ‘You do not wish me to be gentle?’

  ‘Let me be plain, Jack. You are a cold-blooded brute and I detest you. But perhaps I have had my fill of gentleman lovers. You mean to have me and I cannot stop you. But if you must, then do not bore me with talk of gentleness.’ She turned back to him on the stairs and kissed him, biting his lip.

  She heard the intake of breath as she released him and watched his eyes go dark. He hurried the last few steps to draw even with her, pushing her back against the wall to kiss her hard in return.

  She moaned convincingly back at him, tangling her hand in his hair and running a hand down his spine.

  He pulled away again, smiling at her in surprise. And then his gaze turned suspicious. ‘If this is a trick, I will make you pay for it.’ But she could see in his eyes that he wanted to believe her.

  ‘You mean to make me pay, no matter what, Jack. There is nothing left to threaten me with.’ She walked the last few steps to her room, stepped inside and closed the door behind them.