Cousin Bathilda glanced at her. “Something the matter, my dear?”
“I… I was just wondering when Maximus plans to arrest this gin distiller.” Hero dug her fingers into Mignon’s soft fur, and Mignon licked her hand.
“At this very moment,” Cousin Bathilda replied, causing Hero’s heart to nearly stop. “Well, soon in any case. He was muttering something about taking soldiers and finding his informant as he escorted me to his door.”
Hero leaned forward urgently. “Then he hasn’t done it yet? There’s still time?”
Cousin Bathilda looked startled and slowly lowered her teacup. “Why, yes, I suppose so, dear. Whyever do you ask?”
“I-I’ve remembered an appointment,” Hero said, standing and unceremoniously dumping Mignon to the floor. The little dog squawked and retreated under the settee. “Is the carriage still in front?”
“I don’t know,” Cousin Bathilda called behind Hero as she rushed to the door. “Hero, what is this about?”
But Hero was already in the outer hallway making for the stairs. She hadn’t time to explain to either Bathilda or Phoebe. She hadn’t time to find help. She had to go to St. Giles and warn Griffin before her brother threw him in gaol…
On a hanging charge.
THOMAS WAS SURPRISED to see a coach outside Lavinia’s house when he climbed down from his carriage late that afternoon. He frowned, a vague worry beginning to niggle at the back of his mind as he knocked at her door.
The imposing butler answered and scowled down at him. Thomas didn’t bother with any niceties. He brushed past the man, noticing crates and baskets piled against the walls of the hall.
“Where is she?”
“Mrs. Tate is in her rooms,” the man said sourly—and he dropped the “my lord,” Thomas noted.
Thomas ran up the stairs without another word. Damn the man anyway; he was but a mere servant. Thomas was determined to have a word with Lavinia about her staff, but when he reached her rooms, he stopped dead instead. Every drawer was opened in her bureau, and her wardrobe was flung wide. Dresses, petticoats, stockings, shoes, chemises, and other female odds and ends were strewn on every available surface. And in the midst of all this chaos, Lavinia was directing two maids as they packed the clothes into boxes.
“What are you about?” he asked sharply.
She looked up at his voice, and her face went completely blank.
Something in the vicinity of his heart constricted. “Lavinia?”
“Martha, Maisie, please help the footmen in the downstairs sitting rooms,” Lavinia said.
The maids bobbed curtsies and left the room, shooting him curious looks.
He didn’t care what was going through their pea brains. “What are you doing?”
She lifted her chin. “I’m packing to leave of course.”
She wore a simple gray dress today—not at all her usual style—and against her bright wine-red hair, it gave her a severe look.
He had a savage urge to tear it from her body.
“I thought…” He had to stop and swallow past a sudden swelling in his throat. He had a wrenching, horrifying notion that he might weep. “I thought you would stay with me.”
“Because I let you bed me?”
“Yes, damn you!”
She sighed. “But I told you already that I will not be your mistress while you are married to another woman, Thomas. I never changed my mind.”
She turned back to the bed, but he grabbed her arm roughly. “You love me.”
“Yes, I do.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him, sadly it seemed. “But you know love has very little to do with it.”
“Damn you,” he whispered, and because he was in despair, he took her mouth.
She let him. She stood silent and complacent, made no move to struggle, as he ground her lips beneath his. She tasted of mint and tea, and he groaned, growing erect. She’d always done this to him, since the very first time he’d seen her, laughing at some other man in a ballroom. She brought out the animal side of him, made him forget he was a peer, a respected member of parliament, and a gentleman who owned vast amounts of land.
She made him into a man, only a man, and in the past he’d hated her for it: reminding him that beneath the ermine robes he was merely blood and bone like any other wretch who scrabbled for a living in London. But here, now, he no longer cared. He was going to lose her, once and for all. She would simply walk away, wine-red hair, maddening laugh, and those plain brown eyes that saw all of his most shameful secrets and loved him anyway.
And in the end, when he finally took his mouth from hers, she simply looked at him and turned away. She picked up a stocking and began carefully rolling it. “Good-bye, Thomas.”