Mistress by Midnight

“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but I think you mistake me for quite another lady.” There was the slightest emphasis on the word lady. “I am not the sort of woman to be found in any man’s bedchamber. That would be most inappropriate.”

She turned toward the door again and Garrick leaned one hand against the jamb to bar her way. “You ran away last time,” he said. “You are not going to do so now.”

Her blue eyes flashed ice. “I do not take direction from you, your grace.”

“So you do at least know who I am,” Garrick said gently. “I thought you were claiming that we had never met?”

She looked irritated to have been caught out. “I heard Sir Frederick mention your name, that is all.”

Garrick smiled. “How disappointing to discover that you did not deliberately seek to learn my identity,” he murmured.

She flicked him a look of polite scorn. “I am sure that your grace’s self-confidence will survive the blow.”

“I know your name, too,” Garrick said. “You are Lady Merryn Fenner.”

Now there was no doubting her dismay. She stiffened. Her lips pressed together in annoyance. Then she raised her chin and looked him straight in the eyes. She did not deny it.

“I am,” she said. “I am Merryn Fenner.”

Garrick admired both her frankness and her intellect. In that second she had evidently weighed up the fact that he knew her true identity and she had decided that there was nothing to be gained in denying it. Garrick doubted, however, that he had won anything beyond that one point. Merryn Fenner, he was beginning to suspect, would be a stimulating adversary.

There was a silence, as though she was waiting for him to say something. Garrick wondered if she expected him to apologize. He regretted Stephen Fenner’s death every day but any conventional words of condolence would seem at best hollow, at worst hypocritical. And he doubted that any words of his would make the slightest difference to Merryn’s feelings. He had killed Stephen. She hated him for it. He could tell. He could feel the emotion in her, heated, dark, driven.

“What were you doing in my house?” he asked. “Were you telling the truth when you said you were homeless? Sleeping on the streets? Forced to take shelter where you can?”

For a moment his imagination presented him with appalling scenes of the Fenner girls destitute because of his actions all those years before. He had known that the Earl had died a bare year after his son and heir but he had not known what had happened to the daughters. He had been living in exile then, trying to come to terms with the fact that he had failed to save Kitty from the demons and the misery that had haunted her, trying to die in the service of his country and salvage some honor from disaster.

Merryn Fenner was looking at him thoughtfully with those blue, blue eyes. “It is true that my sisters and I lost our fortunes after our father died,” she said, and the guilt that stalked Garrick’s footsteps tugged at him again.

“But that is not the reason that I … borrowed … your bed,” she finished. She turned away slightly, picking up a book from the stack on the table beside them, absently fingering the spine. “I was making a point.” She cast him a glance under her lashes. “Farne House is defenseless, your grace, easily taken.” Her voice was soft. If it had been anyone else Garrick would have thought she was making idle conversation but when she looked up and met his gaze her eyes were fierce. “You should be careful,” she said, “that your secrets are not so … vulnerable.”

Garrick straightened, his eyes narrowing. It was extraordinary that the conversation had moved so swiftly. Lady Merryn Fenner wasted no time. And she was very open in her hostility to him. He suspected that it was because she felt so strongly. He had met men who were as direct but seldom a woman. And with Merryn there was something else, some powerful bond between them that was as undeniable as it was unexpected. Perhaps it had been kindled by her hatred of him, but whatever the cause, it burned in her like a cold flame.

“Are you threatening me, Lady Merryn?” he asked slowly.

“I would do nothing so vulgar as to make threats.” She gave him a proper smile this time. It lit her eyes, making them even more spectacular. “I am warning you,” she said, “that those matters you thought were long buried are going to come out into the light and then …” She shrugged. “Well, you risk losing many of the things that you value, I think.”

“And what do you think that I value?” Garrick asked.

He saw the tiny frown that touched her forehead as she realized that she did not actually know, that she had made assumptions. “Your title? Your fortune?” she hazarded. “Your life?”

“Your title, your fortune, your life …”

Garrick cared little for the Dukedom, beyond the fact that he had a responsibility to all the people who served it. He had often wished it away, thought that one of his younger brothers would have relished the role so much more than he, would have sat in the House of Lords and reveled in his own pomp. As for his fortune, it enabled him to do the things that he wanted and it would be an ungrateful man who did not value that. It also enabled him to protect those who needed him. And then there was his life … He smiled ironically. After Stephen Fenner had died he had thought his life worth nothing. He had tried to discard it on many occasions. He could find nothing to do with it, no matter how he tried. He wondered sometimes if that was his penance for killing a man—that no matter how he tried to atone, nothing would seem good enough, no purpose great enough.

“Do you intend to take those things from me?” he asked now. “Do you seek my death? Because I killed your brother and ruined your life?”

Merryn did not flinch at his deliberately brutal choice of words. She put the book back on the pile very precisely. “Yes,” she said. “I loved my brother and I believe that he deserves justice.” For a moment Garrick saw her glacial coolness splinter into a thousand tiny fragments of pain. “I want to take everything away from you, your grace,” she said. “We lost everything because of you. You deserve to know how that feels.”

Garrick kept his eyes on her face. “What do you intend to do?” he asked.

She raised her brows. “I intend to find out the truth,” she said. “I know there was no duel. I know you shot Stephen in cold blood. I am going to find out what really happened and then …” She stopped and Garrick wondered if she really had the hardihood to go through with it, to see him hang. He saw her swallow hard, saw a tremor go through her.

“And then you will hand the evidence to the authorities and watch me swing on the end of a silken rope,” he said.

Her gaze jerked up. “I …” She blinked. Her gaze locked with his. There was confusion in the depths of her eyes. She looked very young. Garrick felt the most enormous compassion for her. Merryn Fenner was brave and she was honest and she wanted justice and he admired that. But he also knew that if the truth came out she would be horribly disillusioned, all her memories tarnished and her life in ruins once again. Besides, there were others who deserved justice, too, others he had sworn to protect on that terrible day that Stephen had died. He could not permit Merryn to expose them to all the horror that the truth would bring.

“You won’t find any evidence,” Garrick said, and saw the softness fade from her eyes to be replaced by triumph.

“I already have,” she said. For a moment her hand slid to her pocket in a brief, betraying gesture. “I have several pieces of evidence already and I will amass more. You may be sure of it.”

The only thing that Garrick was sure of was that he had to know what she had discovered and he had to stop her. It was fortunate, he thought, that he had not lost all of his rake’s instincts. Without any warning he pulled the ribbons of her bonnet and pushed it back off her head. She gave a little squeak of surprise, a squeak that was muffled against his mouth as he put an arm around her waist and drew her in for a ruthless kiss. Her lips parted on a gasp, opening beneath his. It was the response of an innocent who had never been kissed before. So he had been correct in his initial judgment of her—despite her somewhat unorthodox lifestyle Merryn Fenner was untouched. The realization shot Garrick through with a bolt of lust.

He made no concessions to her inexperience. The kiss was deep, irresistible, a possession. He slid his tongue into her mouth and felt her give a tiny groan. Garrick felt her heat and her response and for a moment he was so overwhelmed that he almost forgot what he was supposed to be doing. His world narrowed to the woman in his arms, the taste and the scent of her, the need to claim her with a primitive desire that all but shattered his control.

He pulled himself back from the brink, released her gently and watched as she opened her eyes. They were a deep, unfocused blue. She pressed her fingers to her lips. They looked plush and red and slightly swollen from his kisses. Garrick’s body tightened further. On one level the kiss had not been the wisest move since it had inflamed his already heated desire for her. On another he had achieved exactly what he had set out to do.

Merryn looked dizzy. Then she blinked the dizziness away and a look of fury came into her eyes.

“I’ve never been kissed before,” she snapped, “and I certainly didn’t want you to be the first.”

“I would apologize,” Garrick said, “but that would be dishonest of me.”

She gave him another look of searing scorn and he watched as she turned and walked smartly away from him, her heels tapping furiously on the marble floor. She went out and closed the door behind her with a sharp snap. Garrick moved across to the window. Presently she appeared again in the courtyard beyond, walking briskly away from the library. She had not replaced her bonnet and the autumn sunlight fell on her silver gilt hair, spinning it into bright, dazzling threads. She was rubbing her head as though it ached. The gesture gave Garrick an odd pang of compassion. She looked very small but upright, dauntless, brave.

Garrick did not take his eyes from her and after a moment she turned and looked over her shoulder, her gaze picking him out at the window. He saw her footsteps falter. For a second their gazes locked and then she raised her chin and turned smartly on her heel, whisking around the corner of the building and out of his sight.

“Your grace?” Barnard touched his arm, recalling him to the present. He was looking, Garrick thought, as flustered as a man might when a Duke had had the bad manners to kiss a lady in the King’s Library. “Your grace,” the librarian repeated, red in the face, spluttering. “Is all quite well?”

“My apologies, Barnard,” Garrick said smoothly. “I did not intend to cause a disturbance.”

Barnard shook his head. Garrick could tell that the librarian was torn between upbraiding him for his appalling want of conduct and the fear of upsetting one of the premier peers in the realm.

“It is no matter, your grace,” Barnard spluttered eventually. “I trust there is no problem with the young lady, though? I take it she is a lady? She had impeccable references so I had no hesitation in agreeing to her request for access to the catalog.”

Garrick almost laughed aloud. Evidently Barnard’s greatest concern was that he might have admitted a woman of ill repute to the King’s Library by mistake.

“Lady Merryn is a noted bluestocking and most definitely a lady,” Garrick said. “The unfortunate incident—” he cleared his throat “—should not be seen as any reflection upon her moral character or indeed her suitability to be permitted to use the King’s Library. I am afraid—” he tried to look appropriately penitent “—that I have a great admiration for Lady Merryn and in that moment it overwhelmed me. The fault is entirely mine.”

“Well,” Sir Frederick said, “I trust that it will not happen again, your grace. Such a shocking thing!”

“Absolutely not,” Garrick said. “My apologies once again.”

After the librarian, partially mollified, had retreated to his desk, Garrick went across to a quiet table and took a seat. He retrieved the piece of paper he had taken from Merryn’s pocket in the throes of their kiss. He unfolded it.

It was an entry from the London Chronicle of July 26, the day after Stephen Fenner had died, and it gave the guest list for a dinner at Lord and Lady Denman’s house the previous night. Garrick immediately saw the name of Chuffy Wallington and recognized the significance. He knew Merryn would have known it, too.

Garrick felt his apprehension tighten. He was sure that if he asked Sir Frederick Barnard, the librarian would confirm that Merryn was searching through all the magazines and periodicals that related to the period around her brother’s death. He wondered what else she had already found. He had thought that all the reports of the Fenner scandal told the same story. He had understood that his father, the Earl of Fenner and Lord Scott had made sure of it, suppressing all other reports. But it was so easy for something to be overlooked, for a detail to slip through the cracks. All it took then was for someone like Merryn, someone passionate about justice, to dig away and discover a discrepancy and for the whole house of cards to start to fall.