Rothbury was the man sent to capture her.
Tess knew him a little. He was an old friend of Alex, Lord Grant, her sister Joanna’s husband, and of Garrick, Duke of Farne, her other brother-in-law. Until earlier in the year, Rothbury had been plain Owen Purchase, an American sea captain, who had most unexpectedly come into a title. Now that he was a viscount the ton fawned upon him but he seemed as indifferent to society’s favour as he had been to their previous disregard. He had visited Alex and Joanna in Bedford Square on several occasions, but Tess had always kept out of his way. She met many handsome men on a daily basis. Almost all of them evoked no emotion in her whatsoever. Occasionally she would feel a faint interest in a man who was witty and intelligent, but the sensation was gone almost as soon as she had felt it. She had long ago assumed that any natural desires she might once have felt had been crushed out of her by the vile experiences of her second marriage. She had assumed she would never feel a physical attraction towards any man. She had grown not to expect it and she did not want it.
Rothbury challenged those assumptions and she did not like it.
It was not merely his physique—tall, broad shouldered, durable, strong. Tess supposed that he was handsome—no, she was obliged to admit that he was handsome—in a rugged manner that was far too physical for her comfort. She preferred men who were no physical threat, men who had spent their morning in company with their barber and their tailor rather than in riding or in swordplay; men who were brushed, pomaded and as au fait with fashion as she was. Rothbury had fought for the British against the French at Trafalgar and later for the Americans against the British at North Point. He had been a sailor, an explorer and an adventurer. Tess preferred men who had never travelled farther than their country estates.
And then there was his manner, incisiveness cloaked in those deceptively silken tones. She was not fooled for a moment. Rothbury pretended to be indolent when he was in fact one of the most intelligent and perceptive men of her acquaintance.
Her awareness of him was as sharp as a whetted blade. It disturbed her.
He was still watching her. Assessing. Unsmiling. Evidently he had recognised her too, for he gave her another immaculate bow.
“Good evening, Lady Darent,” he said. “What an original way to exit a brothel.”
“Lord Rothbury,” Tess said coolly. “Thank you—I never follow the crowd.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mrs. Tong gesturing wildly at her. The bawd seemed to be trying to indicate that this—this—was the man responsible for the raid on the brothel, the man she had been talking about as lacking the wherewithal to sow any oats, wild or otherwise. Rothbury had certainly kept that quiet from his friends, Tess thought, but then no doubt he would. She sensed he was a proud man and it was unlikely he would wish to speak of his incapacity, or for it to become common knowledge. It was not the sort of piece of information one simply dropped into polite conversation.
She tried not to stare at his pantaloons. She had far more pressing matters on her mind other than whether Rothbury was capable of continuing his family line. Such as the fact that she was in a state of déshabillée and Rothbury was still holding her shoes in the one hand and her reticule in the other, with the incriminating papers only a rustle away. She was within an inch of being unmasked as well as undressed.
“You might wish to put your gown back on,” Rothbury said. “It’s optional—” an ironic smile tilted his lips “—but both of us might be more comfortable.”
His narrowed gaze had started at her bare toes and was now travelling upwards with unhurried thoroughness, considering the nimbus of red-and-gold hair that fanned about her bare shoulders and finally coming to rest on her face. His green eyes, as cool as a shower of ice, met her blue ones and there was an expression in them that made the breath catch in her chest.
Tess gave a shiver and grabbed the slippery lavender silk and made the best job she could of wriggling back into it. The night air was cold and nipped at her skin and she was grateful when Rothbury wrapped the soft fur-lined cloak about her, its luxurious folds blocking out the autumn chill. But her feet were still bare. She had had no time to put on stockings and now her toes were very cold.
“If I might have my slippers, Lord Rothbury,” she said. “I doubt they are your size.”
She looked down at his feet, handsome in gleaming Hessians that shone in the faint flicker of light from the only street lamp left burning. She found she was trying to remember the scurrilous gossip she had heard about the correlation between the size of a man’s feet and the size of his cock. Was it that men with big feet were well endowed in other regions of their anatomy as well, or that small men had disproportionately large cocks? Lady Farr was having an affair with her jockey, who was extremely short. And Napoleon Bonaparte was also a short man but rumoured to be a prodigious lover…. And why was she thinking about sex when she tried never to think about it at all, and why was she thinking about it now, at this most inappropriate moment when she should be concentrating on nothing more than escape? And in conjunction with Rothbury, whose own proportions had, presumably, been utterly ruined by a mortar shell or bullet.
To her surprise Rothbury went down on one knee and presented the shoe to her with a grin that was pure wickedness, his teeth a flash of white in a face tanned by a climate somewhat more tropical than London in winter. He slid one slipper onto her foot, his palm warm for a moment against the arch of her instep, and she felt a strange and disconcerting flicker of response deep within her.
“Thank you,” she said, forcing the tiny slippers onto her feet where they pinched like malicious crabs. “Just like Prince Charming.”
“I missed the bit of the fairy tale where Cinderella visited the brothel,” Rothbury said. He straightened up. “What were you doing there, Lady Darent?” His tone was still as courteous as before but that courtesy cloaked an edge of steel. Tess’s instinct for self-preservation snapped another warning. Rothbury was the government’s man here, the man sent to hunt her down. She was tiptoeing across a tightrope. One false step and she would fall. The only advantage she had was that he did not know the identity of the person he was hunting.
He was still holding her reticule. Behind him, Tess could see a posse of dragoons rounding up a few ragged protesters. There had been a riot that night and the street was littered with rubble and broken spars of wood. The gas lamps were smashed and someone had overturned a carriage. One of the shutters on the Temple of Venus hung off its hinge. Torn newspapers flapped in the wind. It was quiet now. Once the soldiers arrived the mob had faded away as quickly as they had come, and only the faint smell of burning hung on the cold tide of London air.
Tess shrugged, bringing her gaze back to Rothbury’s impassive face.
“Why does anyone visit a brothel, Lord Rothbury?” she said lightly. “If you have an imagination, now would be the time to use it.” She arched an ironic brow. “I assume you are questioning me on some authority and not simply because you are impertinently curious about my sex life?”
Rothbury shifted. “I am here on the authority of the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth,” he said. “There was an illegal political meeting at The Feathers Inn tonight. Do you know anything about it?”
Tess’s heart bumped erratically. “Do I look like the sort of woman who would know anything about politics, Lord Rothbury?” she said. “I have absolutely no interest in it at all.”
She saw Rothbury’s teeth gleam as he smiled. “Indeed,” he said. “Then you will have equally little interest in the fact that I am hunting for a number of dangerous criminals
