opened Pandora’s box with his kisses and let loose all nature of strange feelings and emotions into her world. Hopefully common sense hadn’t got out with the rest. Maybe it still hung there like a butterfly with one wing caught in the closed box lid, the other wing struggling for release. It certainly wasn’t still in the box—tonight had illustrated that. At best, she had only half of it left.
Jack had awakened the curiosities of both mind and body. She was twenty-six and seriously doubted she would ever make a marriage that suited her temperament. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to know the mysteries of the marriage bed, the secrets of satisfying the passions of the body.
She was not so naïve as to be unaware that a certain calibre of gentleman had offered to solve that mystery for her. To date, she’d always been quick to scotch any efforts in the direction. Some risks were simply not worth taking. The kind of gentleman who offered such gratification was not the kind of gentleman who would keep her secrets. Good heavens, Amberston hadn’t even kept their horse race secret. One could only guess what someone like him would do with an even bigger secret.
Jack was different. The shocking thought nearly jolted her off the carriage seat. An idea came to Dulci. Why not Jack? Any woman with eight seasons behind her, virgin or not, knew when a man desired her and Jack had wanted her. Perhaps he only wanted her for a night, for the novelty of it.
Whatever his motives, he did want her and that was all that mattered. If his wanting lasted only a night, so much the better. She was looking to satisfy her curiosity, nothing long term. Jack had already proven he could wake her passions and he’d already proven he could be discreet. He kept secrets for the Empire. He could surely keep one short liaison from public consumption and he would never tell Brandon.
Dulci tapped her chin with a gloved finger. Hmm. Brandon might be a sticking point. She would have to overcome any resistance his friendship with Brandon might pose. Then she laughed out loud in the empty carriage at the ridiculous notions passing through her head. She was actually sitting here planning how to seduce the notorious Viscount Wainsbridge! She needed her head examined. What woman of virtue deliberately gave away her greatest asset? Moreover, in her numerous seasons she’d seen with her own eyes what happened to the young girls who’d fallen prey to various pre-marital temptations. The world wasn’t big enough for a fallen woman.
A wicked voice whispered its rebuttal: only if you get caught. You haven’t been caught yet. Jack’s perfect—discreet, skilled and in no mood to get caught himself. He might even empathise with you…
She could laugh all night at the odd ideas floating through her mind, but Dulci could not quell the growing sense that in spite of all the decent reasons not to go through with it, she just might.
Chapter Three
Jack Hanley, the first Viscount Wainsbridge for all of five years, always answered the king’s summons to Clarence House with alacrity and anxiety no matter what time of day or night it came or whose bed it found him in. Alacrity because one did not keep his monarch waiting, especially when one possessed a title as new as his. Anxiety because he knew the summons was merely a prelude to upheaval. William would not have called him if something had not been afoot that needed his special attentions. No doubt there’d been a development with the Venezuelans, but he was suspicious that it had occurred so quickly. He’d only met them an hour ago.
‘I need you to stop a war.’ William said abruptly as Jack entered. Jack merely nodded as if such statements were commonplace conversation and shut the door of the Clarence House study behind him. He had suspected as much. The initial rumours had been confirmed, then.
‘When, your Majesty?’ He took in the room with a sweeping glance, nodding curtly to the third man present, Viscount Gladstone from the Foreign Office.
William IV toyed idly with a paperweight. ‘The war hasn’t precisely happened yet. But I have it on good authority from Gladstone here that it will if we don’t take steps now.’
Ah, it was to be a pre-emptive action then. He was good at that. Jack took the liberty of pouring himself a brandy at the sideboard. He took a seat and expertly flipped up the tails of his evening wear, sliding a careful glance at Gladstone. He had personal reasons for not liking the man. Gladstone made no secret of his contempt for Jack’s inferior birth and first-generation title. But professionally, the man possessed an astonishing acumen for foreign intelligence.
‘Tell Wainsbridge what you’ve told me,’ William said.
Gladstone cleared his throat. ‘Venezuela is contesting its shared borders with British Guiana. They wish to extend their boundaries. It goes without saying that we are not interested in giving up our claims to that territory.’ Gladstone stood up and walked to a long table, gesturing for Jack to follow.
With a long finger, Gladstone traced the boundaries on a map spread before them. ‘The border in question is south-east of the Essequibo River.’
Jack nodded. He was one of the few who understood the magnitude of rivers in British Guiana. The marshy topography of British Guiana made coastal rivers the only thoroughfares into the interior. ‘This is no small contention. We’re dealing with approximately thirty-thousand square miles of property.’ In a land of marshes and rivers, such territory was worth squabbling over.
Jack looked up from the map, back to where William sat. This information was not new to him. Indeed, it had been at the root of his presence at the Fotheringay ball. What he didn’t know were the motives behind it. ‘Do we have any speculations as to why Venezuela is suddenly interested in this section of territory?’
For centuries, ever since Britain had first staked a claim to Guiana in the sixteen hundreds, Spain had not done more than establish a handful of missions along the border. The border had been undefined and peaceful. Of course, it was an independent Venezuela now, not Spain that shared the border. Perhaps after a little over ten years of independence, Venezuela was flexing its muscle in the region.
‘That’s where you come in, Wainsbridge.’ William leaned back in his chair, hands steepled.
‘Of course, anything, your Majesty. I am always at your service,’ Jack said easily, hiding his apprehension. He’d had to train himself over the last few years to stay alert in William’s presence. The man acted more like a retired naval officer—which he was—than royalty—which had been a far-fetched possibility once. It was easy to forget that the tall, white-haired man with a soft chin and friendly eyes commanded a nation. Being with the man felt almost ordinary, like being with a beloved uncle until one remembered that, unlike the uncle who could be refused, one could not refuse the king.
‘As you know, you’ve been asked to determine how real rumours of this border dispute are. I am interested in hearing how your evening went with the Venezuelan delegation.’
‘I met them, but just barely.’ Jack eyed Gladstone suspiciously. None of this was urgent or beyond what he already knew. Why the emergency summons?
Gladstone flicked a glance at William. ‘There’s been a further development. One of the gentlemen in the delegation is heavily influenced by a private and powerful consortium of Venezuelan businessmen who are eager to profit from the boundary dispute. We want to identify him as quickly as possible. It is believed the gentleman, whoever he is, may be in possession of a forged map that shows Venezuela’s “preferred” boundaries. He may try to pass it off as a legitimate document and use it as evidence to force a new treaty of limits.’
Jack immediately thought of Calisto Ortiz, his smooth manners and his ‘ombudsman’ attachment to the delegation—official
