Loving Lady Lazuli (London Jewel Thieves Book 1) Read online

  Of course he had drunk too much. Why not? In those days he was a reckless young blade doing everything entirely too fast, and he always drank too damned much. He did everything too damned much. Hell, he’d to make up for Ardent, didn’t he? The family’s precious boy, who prayed and went to church and recited the bible in Latin. That was why Devorlane had been in the coach, alone, his head hanging out the coach window, going home in disgrace. Again.

  “Lady Armstrong?” He tried to quell the uneasy feeling that he’d seen this perfectly exotic creature before somewhere, and it wasn’t in the ten years he’d just spent in the military either.

  Tilly’s nod suggested faint moral discomfort. Despite being three sheets to the wind, clearly she’d still have been a damn sight happier if his gaze had slid to one of the other girls in the room. A younger one who didn’t have the encumbrance of a former association, who she could neatly control, who wasn’t in deepest mourning.

  Mourning? His mind reeled. Talk about brass neck.

  “Is she insane? What the hell is she doing here?”

  “I know. I know.” Tilly spread one bony hand despairingly. “And I’m so sorry. I know I shouldn’t have let her come. I told Belle. I said, a widow should not flout herself in pulblic—hic—sorry, public, especially s’in times of war. But you know what Belle is s’like. Bossy as … Well, bossy.”

  The hair had been entirely different. Fair in the clear, cold moonlight. So silvery, beneath the magenta hood, he’d actually thought he was gazing at an angel. But luxuriantly disarrayed, as if she’d impossibly tiptoed from some man’s bed, only minutes before.

  True, the fire’s glow caressed raven black locks, so tightly bound he had to actively restrain himself from striding across the floor and freeing them from their prison of pins. But there was something very familiar about the widened curve of her lips and the jaunty tilt of her head, something which was getting the same unfortunate reaction from his straining trouser front now as then.

  He gritted his teeth. This couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. Not here. Not now. Why the hell would she be here? Now?

  “Another man lost to the war is it?”

  “What? Oh, Devorlane, I don’t know.” Tilly shrugged. “But I honestly wish you wouldn’t stare at her like that. S’it’s impolite. Where are your manners? She’s a widow for heaven’s sake.”

  Heaven. Yes, in his completely befuddled state that’s where he’d thought the beautiful, ethereal creature was from. In the frosted cavern, made by the dipping boughs, she’d looked unreal. A forest fairy. A tree sprite. Hang it all, it had been Christmas Eve, and he’d drunk enough punch to sink the British fleet—at anchor. The creamy skin, the succulent coral lips, had done more than just catch his attention. They’d drawn him in. Had cast a spell. So he’d ordered the coach stopped.

  That rustle had begun to rush.

  “Just how old would you say she was?”

  That damned conniving vixen had been roughly sixteen. Or so he’d reckoned. And he’d stuck to the belief through thick and thin. She had been far too young to be Sapphire, the notorious jewel thief whose name had been on everyone’s lips that season. And the entire two seasons before that. Entirely justified as the heists piled up: The Lambeth heist that saw a reward of a thousand guineas being offered for the return of Madam De Courcy’s diamond tiara, gold locket, and topaz bracelet from a chest in her chamber—although how Madame De Courcy came to have a diamond tiara in a chest in her chamber, when she had apparently fled the Terror in France in her stocking soles, had never been fully explained. Or how she could afford the thousand guinea reward either. Then there was the Weaverfield Mansion heist, a mystery involving a locked room and its even more mysteriously missing contents. Then, within two weeks, as if Sapphire needed to prove her worth, because rewards were being offered, because people were desperate to see her hang, the Buckleys, the Fieldings, the Mornays—all families of note—found their jewel boxes lighter, that no safe was safe enough.

  How many times had he been told only Sapphire would have possessed the guile and daring to have snatched the Wentworth emeralds from beneath the Wentworths’ noses? The crime had her hallmark stamped all over it: A glittering house-party. A bauble worth a king’s ransom. A sudden, daring raid. How on earth could Sapphire have only been sixteen? It wasn’t possible. It meant she must have started stealing when she was nine or ten. Maybe even earlier?

  It was the single reason no one had been prepared to believe him. Not even his own family. Although, now he considered it, not one single description of Sapphire existed in any newspaper. Or any wanted sheet. Like Lady Armstrong, she was a mystery. An enigma. A mythical creature no one had ever actually seen.

  But, if that damned hell-cat had been roughly sixteen then, it meant she would be approximately twenty-six now. The sweet set of her ladyship’s face said if she was a day over it he was his own grandfather.

  “Old? Why, Devorlane! Stop it!” Tilly giggled with unease, largely for the benefit of those sitting nearest. “You know as well as I do, the subject of a lady’s age is not deemed fit for discussion. Hic.”

  Fighting not to spit the words, he muttered, “Just answer me one question. Did you do this deliberately?”

  “Deliberately? I admit I asked some of these girls here. Yes. I thought it—well, you see, I thought it would be s’nice. But not her. No. No. You would have to ask Belle about her. Although I must say, while I may not know anything about Lady Armstrong, what I have been able to determine—”

  “Not a hell of a lot, by your own admission.”

  “—is mannered and cultured and—”

  “Manners and culture, be hanged. They’ve never been worth a damn.”

  Gritting her teeth, Tilly continued. “What ish the matter with you? Hmm? Don’t you know the past ish the past?”

  “Isn’t that easy for you to say?”

  “I do say. I don’t see why not. And even though she never discusses hers, it is perfectly obvious her grief is genuine, so she must be respectable. I mean just look at her, the poor, poor woman. How terrible to sit there, seeing everyone else so happy, when she herself has lost so much. It makes me want to cry. In a minute I will.”

  He’d honestly believed that light-fingered trollop was respectable too. It was one of the worst things about the nightmare that had followed. When he’d seen her and ordered the coach to stop, she was so damned respectable she’d gathered her skirts and hurried across the road, like some demure maiden, terrified he was going to rape her.

  Even at that distance he’d seen the frozen tears glistening all along the dark curve of her eyelashes, brilliant diamonds in the frosted light. A lady in distress. A beautiful, tear-stricken creature. That was what had made him open the coach door. Ten years. Gone in a flash.

  “How exactly does ding-dong, excruciating Belle know her?” Of course Belle would be the one to bring her here. Belle, who had never done a useful thing in her entire life, except fall in with his mother.

  “Why shouldn’t Belle know her? We all do. Oh, Devorlane, I forgot, there is just so much, so much you don’t know. So much we do need to catch up on—later. But you remember Barwych Hall? The house s’about a half mile from here?”

  “That old dump?”

  He remembered it well. Hall was perhaps an overly generous term. It did not boast above six rooms and had been uninhabited for almost, if not quite, as long as he remembered.

  She shrugged. “Lady Armstrong lives there. She’s our neighbor.”

  “Neighbor?”

  “Yes. She lives s’lere with some serving girls, Pearl and Ruby, she brought from London. Very, very refined girls. So I’m afraid we get no gossip. Not even a snifter. Anyway, why are you so s’interested in Lady Armstrong? Do you know her?”

  Know her?

  Ten years ago on Christmas Eve, the most stunning, most ethereally beautiful girl he had ever seen had accepted a lift in his coach. She had kissed him. Then disappeared into thin air.

  He had ne
ver forgotten it. The ice-fire of her lips. Or her. Or the gift she’d somehow slipped into his pocket, while he sprawled there, dazedly thinking if that was heaven, he’d forfeit the rest of his life now.

  The Wentworth emeralds.

  His father needn’t have looked that far after all.

  Now, unless he was completely mistaken, that damned bitch was sitting by the library fire in respectable widow’s weeds, the coral lips parted in pretended conversation with his mother’s fawning ward, Belle.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hell on earth. Who was that man, immaculate in fawn trousers and a great-coat, so exquisite it heightened Cass’s awareness of what was beneath it, staring as if she was on offer in a whorehouse window? Sexual confidence sizzled so strongly in every line of his body it seemed to transfer itself to the beautifully tailored, softly colored clothes—ten guineas as she lived and breathed.

  A right bad one. Cass you stay well away, her mother’s whisper rang in her ears, although she couldn’t exactly remember the last time she’d seen her.

  The fifteen pairs of eyes looking at him were perfectly understandable. Only consider the candlelight gleaming on his unfashionably short sable hair. And those eyes. The cool appraisal, sizzling confidence. What wasn’t understandable, when she certainly wasn’t going to be the sixteenth, was her head swiveling his way as if it didn’t belong to her but to one of them. Why was he looking at her—no, she was not mistaken—as if she were meat and he were something carnivorous? So the intense focus of the regard turned her insides to mush?

  She waited for his stare to make its way around the room: over the books, the golden-tooled volumes, the shining silver candelabra, the ancient terrestrial globes, the women. Decorous, far prettier women, far younger than herself. And she thanked God when it did.

  Then it swung back.

  Stay well away? She’d like to. What was he playing at? Looking at her like this?

  “Would you care for something else?” Belle, resplendent in a shimmering, oriental blue gown, her carefully pinned hair adorned with a matching rose, beckoned a liveried footman.

  “I’m sorry?” Cass fought the urge to fan herself. What she’d care for right now? What was wrong with her?

  “A little lemonade perhaps?”

  Lemonade? Cass glanced at the tray of glasses glimmering in front of her face. When brandy straight, stiff was on the go? She wound a gloved hand around the nearest crystal stem. “Thank you. Yes, I’ll have that.”

  “But, Cassidy.” Belle laughed uneasily. “Is that wise? Think of the recital …”

  “Oh, I am, Belle. Rest assured. Nothing’s closer to my mind. My heart too.”

  That flutter in her stomach needed settling. Maybe this wasn’t the right remedy, it was certainly better than nothing. Already her palms were coated in a sticky sweat at the thought of the recital—Belle’s idea, not hers—why add to it by having a manor house garden of butterflies flutter in her stomach?

  “Trust me,” she added, raising the glass to her lips. “The recital will go all the better for a little—”

  “Oh! Oh, my sacred stars and heavens!”

  Cass paused midsentence. Mid-slug too. Had a ghost just materialized on the Turkish rug? The blood rushed from Belle’s face. Cass reached to take her hand, not something she’d normally touch with fire tongs, but there was a first time for everything and the thought that Belle might collapse made her charitable.

  “Devorlane!” Belle bounded from the chair. “I can’t believe it! Ten years! Oh my … my … ”

  Lord.

  Definitely the word Cass’s jaw hung open on.

  “My darling … Devorlane!”

  Cass snapped her jaw shut and brought her gaze back. So? The long-legged, lean-limbed specimen, with the carnivorous stare and gleaming Hessian boots, was Devorlane. The famed Devorlane Hawley. Soldier. Duke. Satan’s spawn by the looks of him. In fact if looks could kill Belle would be be dead on the rug. Buried too.

  “Yes, Belle.”

  Or maybe that was just the impression given by the emerald eyes—ten carats if they were a day—sitting like ice-chips beneath long, straight brows? The slight hint of stubble darkening his shockingly sensuous upper lip? Not that she blamed him. Wherever the good fairies had been the day Belle came into the world, it certainly wasn’t around any cradle of hers. Within a five mile radius either.

  “Ten years,” he continued. “An eternity to be without certain things. The things one holds dear.”

  Pardon her for smothering the yawn and fiddling with her skirt front, but when she’d been without so many things for almost the whole of her life, did this aristocratic specimen of blazing masculinity seriously expect her to pity him? Angling for her attention was more like it.

  Well, despite the fact he was so damned handsome, no-one should be allowed to look like that, he wasn’t getting it.

  “Don’t you think?” he added.

  Thinking wasn’t possible actually given the look he levelled on her. Fortunately the swirling patterns on the ornate rug were very interesting that way.

  “Devorlane, how well you look. Why, the way Tilly went on and on and on about your leg wound, I imagined you might even be brought in here on a stretcher, in a wheel—”

  “It’s a scratch.”

  Despite staring nonchalantly at the rug, she felt his coldly burning stare swing to her. “Compared to other things.”

  What was that supposed to mean? That she was to be compared to a scratch? Or that she was a thing? Or … ? The floor pitched in Turkish carpeted waves around her, as she shot to her feet.

  “Cassidy! You’re surely not leaving us?”

  Was the act on a par with nicking the crown jewels? Something Cass had considered once or twice but never done.

  “No … Um … I … ” She grasped her fan tighter, feeling the slats dig through the soft cotton of her glove. There must be some excuse she could think of. “Was just going to check the—the--”

  Aspidistra? One stood over by the door.

  “Cassidy?” Knowledge? Surprise? Something flickered under his sensuous eyelids. “Cassidy Armstrong?”

  Cass’s heart scudded across three beats. Cassidy Armstrong? My lord, what chance presented itself here? Was she seriously going to pass up the chance to learn what she’d come all the way to darkest Berkshire to find? Bolt because she’d never been at a house party as a properly invited guest, instead of one who rifled bureau drawers and forced open chests without thinking, who was always one step away from the noose?

  Bolt? Because a man stared at her? A salacious devil who couldn’t keep his eyes to himself? Was she stark, raving mad?

  Wasn’t it bad enough she’d just leaped to her feet fearing he knew she was Sapphire? When fear wasn’t in her vocabulary? How the hell would he know her as Sapphire? How would anyone here know her as that? She’d never looked the same way twice. She wouldn’t be Sapphire otherwise.

  Well? Was it possible he was actually going to tell her the truth that eluded her? The one she’d held to for twenty-two years? Say, ‘because you’re Cassidy Armstrong, the rightful owner of Barwych?’ She set the empty glass down on a side table—chipped, in need of restoration, but still worth a bob or two.

  “How … how do you know my name?”

  “I made it my special business to acquire it from Tilly.”

  “I see.”

  In itself? Enough to turn her insides to queasy froth. What made her think they were about to acquaint themselves with the Turkish rug, however, was the casual manner in which he now also acquired the chair opposite. No bow. No hand kiss. Nothing. Just a complete ignoring of her, so she might as well not be there, as he brushed past.

  “Do forgive me, Mrs. Armstrong, at times that scratch is painful.” Leveling his gaze on her, he flicked the creases from the knees of his trousers. Then he stretched his long, lean legs across the rug. All the way across, blocking her exit to the door. “I acquired it in the Portuguese Peninsular. Do you know of such pla
ces?”

  “The Portuguese Peninsular?” Belle’s mouth dropped open all the way to her chin. “Devorlane … Don’t be ridiculous. Why on earth should Cassidy know of such places? She’s a widow for goodness sake.”

  “Really?” The flicker in his dark eyes said there was nothing more ridiculous. “You know I find that simply amazing. Doubly, truly amazing.”

  While she hadn’t thought it ridiculous before, she could see now, that standing here like a frump in crow feathers, he did have a point. She’d just been a little too taken up with the way he flicked those trouser creases and stretched his legs to consider that Belle was right to tell him off. The Portuguese Peninsular? Maybe he did mean the place, but it was unlikely.

  He knew her all right. And not as Cassidy Armstrong of Barwych, Lord Armstrong’s rightful heir either. So it was vital she cease admiring his trouser creases and find out from where exactly he knew her, so she could decide what the hell to do about it. She cleared her throat, offered her coolest stare.

  “Name, chair, scratch. It sounds like you’ve acquired a lot of things, my lord.”

  His prickling emerald gaze—seventy five carats if it was a day—swept her face. “Oh. Some things are worthier of the pursuit than others, Mrs. Armstrong.”

  Pursuit? If ever there was a word calculated to make her feel like a leashed falcon, and each of her breaths rise so sharply against the bars of her whale-boned corset, as if they would not be satisfied till they snapped it in two, it was …

  Some things.

  Still she gave what was surely an exquisite shrug. “It’s Lady Armstrong, if you don’t mind.”

  “Lady?”

  That tendency people told her she had to set her jaw—this wasn’t the place to do it, was it, just because he was obviously the kind of vile big beggar who hadn’t grown out of the habit of tearing the wings off pinned butterflies, learned when he was a little beggar?

  Widow wasn’t just a touch of genius. Sapphire was dead and buried, with a nice tombstone in Highgate Cemetery all the Starkadder sisterhood had laid wreaths on. Amber—who Cass was still astonished about, given the amount of times they’d torn each other’s hair out in fights—and Jade had wept buckets into their lacey mittens. Emerald too, while Pearl had bawled her eyes out.