The Disgraceful Mr. Ravenhurst Page 11

  But was that any help? She pushed the chair away from the table and began to walk up and down. It would be logical to assume that the original hiding place for the valuable artefacts was close to where the orgies had been held, but that did not mean that later de Beaumartins had not hidden the things elsewhere. Or that part of the chateau may have been demolished to make way for the eighteenth-century additions. Had she wasted her time? Perhaps, although Mama might find it useful.

  From the corridor outside she heard the sound of footsteps, doors shutting. Everyone, it seemed, was going to bed. Elinor stood up to close the lid of her paint box and swirl the brushes in the water pot, then stood, dripping brushes poised in mid-air. Now was probably as good a time as any to corner Theo and persuade him to let her help in his search. She would give it half an hour to let everyone else settle down. Elinor reached out to trim a guttering candle and settled down to study the plan again.

  Theo padded around his room, studying its furniture and pictures with automatic professional interest while his mind sifted through the impressions of the day. Either the Traceys were very, very good at dissembling, or they were exactly what they seemed: keen amateurs with the money and leisure to indulge their interests and the temperament to regard rivalry as an amusing sport.

  Ana would not be here, surely, if she already had the Chalice? On the other hand, she had all the instincts of a cat and nothing would appeal to her more than to see him threshing around looking for the thing when she knew she had it safe. He arrived in front of an ornate baroque mirror and realised that he was still stark naked, distracted when he had finished washing by the sight of an interesting Italian Primitive hanging by the door.

  The mirror was one of the items he had tracked down for the late count. Now he stood in front of it and studied himself critically. The swelling on his face had subsided, but the cuts and bruises did nothing to enhance his looks. Not that his face was something he ever paid much attention to. His body was another matter—he relied on that to function well and to keep him out of trouble. He sucked in his stomach muscles and winced, then flexed his shoulders, critically studying the way the muscles moved, identifying each twinge of discomfort. That was better, less pain there now and the bastards had not got round to kicking him in the kidneys.

  The heavy silk dressing gown lay across the end of the bed and he pulled it on, enjoying the slither of cool silk over warm skin. He would sleep for an hour, perhaps two, then dress again and begin the systematic search of the castle that would take him several nights to complete. If Leon was bluffing and had the Chalice, he would find it.

  He left the candles burning, lay back on the heaped pillows and closed his eyes. Outside his door a board creaked. He had noticed it that evening, registering it as something to be avoided on his nocturnal wanderings. Now he opened one eye a fraction and slid his right hand up under the pillows beside his head until he could grip the butt of the pistol.

  The door opened. Even in the dim light the figure was unmistakeable. He did not relax his grip on the weapon. ‘Teó? Are you asleep?’

  The champagne silk négligé was familiar, he could remember buying it for her. It was an elegant confection and not one that could conceal as much as a stiletto. He removed his hand from under the pillow and sat up warily. ‘What do you want, Ana?’

  ‘Such a warm welcome.’ She sat on the end of the bed, her back against the post, and arranged herself languidly. It was no surprise to find a warm foot caressing his instep. Nor was he surprised at the way his groin tightened or by the heavy ache of arousal. She was a beautiful woman and he knew very precisely what she was capable of in bed. What was new was the complete indifference of his mind to the promise of her body.

  ‘Poor Teó, were you so injured in your—fall, did you say?—that you cannot please a woman?’

  ‘No, it was not a fall and I have no desire to have my back raked by your talons, Ana. Tonight or any night.’

  She showed no sign of displeasure at his rebuff, nor did the caressing foot stop its sensual slide over his calf. The heavy silk slithered off his knee, exposing the length of his leg, and her eyes narrowed as her foot moved higher. ‘Your patron is unhappy not to receive the Chalice, then?’

  ‘Yes. He is not a patient man.’ He concentrated on regulating his breathing and not flinging off the bed away from her. It was what she wanted, a reaction from him, any sign she was hurting him. Men did not refuse Ana de Cordovilla, she rejected them.

  ‘And if you cannot retrieve it?’

  ‘Then I will have to repay him.’

  ‘Can you afford to?’

  ‘Yes.’ It would clean him out; he would probably have to sell some of his own carefully selected investment collection and the carriage as well if he was to retain the resources to travel, earn again.

  ‘You are a richer man than I realised. But better not to have to. Better by far to deliver the Chalice and to earn your fee, which must be substantial. Big enough to share, perhaps?’

  ‘Is that an offer of help?’ Her toes had reached his groin, slipping under the edge of the robe, the lovely taut line of her leg fully extended. Theo closed his hand around her ankle and lifted her foot away. He had no intention of gratifying her with the evidence of the effect she was having on his body. If she was angling after a cut of the fee, then she did not have the Chalice. Or was it simply a bluff to distract him while she negotiated with the count for some other pieces?

  ‘Why not?’ Ana curled her legs under her, a still golden figure in the candlelight. ‘We are a formidable team. I will begin by seducing Sir Ian—perhaps he knows something.’

  ‘We were never a team, Ana, and, no, I do not require your help. And leave the man alone, he loves his wife, they do not need your meddling.’

  ‘Love?’ A flicker of anger passed over her face. ‘Foolishness. What is the use of love? You are too sentimental, Teó.’ Before he could move she had uncurled herself from the end of the bed and was in his arms, her mouth hot and hungry on his, her long fingers curling around him in a blatant caress. It was so very different from the last pair of lips that had pressed themselves to his.

  He made himself lie still until she lifted her head, staring down haughtily at his unresponsive face. ‘Embracing chastity, Teó?’ Her hand moved, sliding expertly down his aroused flesh. ‘Difficult, is it not? Or perhaps you are saving yourself for your virginal spinster cousin. I am sure she would appreciate your…interest.’

  Theo lay still until he heard the door close behind her, his eyes on the underside of the bed canopy. He reached down and flicked the skirts of his robe back across his legs, despising himself for reacting to Ana in any way, uncomfortably aware that her jibe about Nell had focused that tense ache on her image.

  My virginal spinster cousin. He had polished the gem stone a little and now she sparkled, but it was not simply her looks that had attracted him. He knew it was her humour and her stoicism and her intelligence and that gleam in her eyes when she looked at him and the trust of her hand in his and her mouth under—

  ‘Theo?’ Nell was inside the room, the door closing behind her, and he had not even heard her opening it. He was hallucinating—he had fallen asleep and was dreaming.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ Theo sat bolt upright, appalled. Inappropriate thoughts about a young lady were one thing, finding her in his bedchamber, quite another.

  ‘Shh! I knew you were awake, I saw the marquesa leaving.’ She perched on the end of the bed on the rumpled patch of cover where Ana had coiled her long body and regarded him critically. ‘Are you sure that it is a good thing, becoming intimate with her again?’ She blushed. ‘I mean, of course…trusting her?’

  ‘I—’ Theo snapped his mouth shut. He’d been within an inch of explaining that he had rebuffed Ana’s advances, being defensive as though there was something between Nell and himself, something beyond friendship. ‘What the devil were you about, watching my door? Is there a queue out there
?’

  Disconcertingly Nell snorted with laughter. ‘I am sure Laure and Antoinette would be there if they dared. I was watching because I wanted to talk to you about searching the chateau.’

  ‘This is not the place, nor the time. Have you any idea what would happen if you were discovered in here?’

  ‘It would be all right, you are my cousin,’ she began, for the first time sounding doubtful. He saw her eyes flicker to the robe he was wearing and to his bare feet and ankles. All he had to do was to reach out, push her down on to the bed and use his strength and his sensual expertise and she would be his. She was too innocent not to yield, he thought, disgusted at himself, fighting to make sense of his impulses. What was the matter with him? He had just repulsed a sensual and experienced lover and here he was contemplating seducing an innocent.

  Self-recrimination made him snap, ‘I am a man, you idiot girl. Do you want to end up married to me? Because I am damned sure I don’t want to find myself in that situation.’ What, he asked himself savagely, finding reasons to push her away, would he do with a wife?

  He realised he could not interpret the expression in her eyes. Shock at how indiscreet she was being? Alarm at finding herself in a man’s bedchamber? She slipped off the bed and went to the door. Theo felt the breath he had been holding sigh out of his lungs, then she turned the key in the lock and padded back and sat down. ‘Now no one can walk in and surprise us,’ she said prosaically. ‘You are quite safe.’

  Which was more than she was. ‘You look about seventeen,’ he said crossly. It was not what he had intended to say: Get back to your room this minute being the highest on the list. She was valiant, his Nell. But she was regarding him candidly from those wide hazel eyes, clad from head to toe in a plain cotton nightgown of utter respectability with her hair in a heavy plait over one shoulder. A greater contrast to Ana it would be hard to imagine. And yet he was aroused. Painfully, embarrassingly and inconveniently aroused in both body and mind by a virgin bluestocking with no experience except a few kisses.

  ‘I do not think that was a compliment,’ she observed severely. ‘Theo, listen, I have been studying the plan. It will take ages for one person to search alone, but if we do it together—’

  ‘And if we are found?’

  ‘We will think of something. Two brains are better than one.’ He shook his head, feeling control beginning to slip away from him in the face of her certainty. ‘Well, in that case I will search by myself, which is not a rational way to proceed.’

  Silence. Theo regarded Nell, wondering what would happen if he took her by the shoulders and shook her. He rather thought he could not trust himself to touch her. But he believed her threat to explore by herself. And somewhere in all of this mystery was the person who had knocked him unconscious and taken the Chalice.

  ‘Very well. If you are still awake at two, then get dressed and we will search.’ Once upon a time, before he met his cousin Elinor, he had thought himself in control of his life. At least if she was with him he would know what she was up to. ‘We will start in Leon’s study.’

  ‘I agree,’ she said, nodding approval of the plan as though they were equal partners in this. ‘The old count may have left some clue to its traditional hiding place. Until two, then.’

  She went out as quietly as she had come in. Theo listened, but the board did not creak, which meant that she had deliberately avoided it. No fool, his cousin. No fool, but one hell of a complication.

  Elinor sat down at the table in her room and stared unseeing at the plan. She had got her own way, she should be happy, not feeling hurt and confused and thoroughly hot and bothered.

  It was not until she was inside Theo’s bedchamber that it had occurred to her there might be any awkwardness in marching into a man’s room two minutes after his mistress had left it. He could have been unclothed. He would certainly not be in any mood for a chat about hidden treasure.

  But it did not seem as though Ana was his mistress any more—unless lovemaking was a much faster, tidier and less strenuous activity than she had been led to believe.

  But it was different, being alone, both of them in their nightclothes, in a darkened bedchamber late at night. Different from that sunlit quarry where he had kissed her, different from his room at St Père where she had dressed his injuries and held him out of sheer thankfulness he was still alive. The shadows had hidden his face from her, veiling both the bruises and the familiar features.

  Without his face to focus on, she had been burningly aware of his body under that exotic robe, of his hands, of his bare feet. And she had wanted to touch him. Was this desire? It seemed that being a confirmed spinster did not protect you from such feelings, nor could the application of common sense and intelligence stop you fantasising about a man. A man who might be quite willing to kiss her—men appeared to be thoroughly undiscriminating in that respect—but who certainly would not see her as a lover. Or anything other than a friend.

  And then he had snapped at her, warned her quite clearly that he did not want to be found in a compromising situation with her. It hurt and she could not work out why. He was perfectly correct, it would be terrible to have to marry someone because you had compromised them. It was certainly no basis for a marriage. And she knew she was never going to marry, knew that those kisses had been all she was ever going to experience. She was a rational, educated, intelligent female—so why did Theo’s words wound her so much?

  You should be glad he is not a silver-tongued hypocrite, the voice of common sense chided. And you should be very glad indeed he has no idea that you are lusting after him. Because that was what she was doing, there was no hiding it from herself.

  Elinor looked at the clock. Half past midnight. An hour and a half. Time to search this room thoroughly. The count was hardly likely to hide his indecent treasure in a guest room, but she might as well be thorough. Elinor removed her remaining old gown from the press and got dressed again. It was a deep bottle green, ideal for skulking about in the shadows, and was not such a bad fit as the others, so she might escape a lecture from Theo on how dreadful it was.

  Theo’s scratch on the door panels was so faint she would not have heard it if she had not been listening for him. He stepped back abruptly, straight on to one of the creaking floorboards, when she opened the door, knife in hand.

  ‘Shh!’

  ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed.

  ‘Searching my room. My painting knife is excellent for getting between floorboards, but none of them are loose.’

  It was hard to see in the dim light of the dark lantern he carried, but she thought he cast up his eyes. ‘Come on.’

  The chateau was an eerie place at night. Sections of it were decorated and furnished to match their period, so one moment there was the comforting bulk of long-case clocks and armoires with vases on top, the next a suit of armour would loom out of the shadows or the mounted head of a wild boar would appear silhouetted against a window. Elinor resisted the urge to clutch Theo’s coattails and padded along behind him in her light slippers, the knife still in her hand.

  He found his way easily through the passageways to the study door. Elinor had thought she had committed the plan to memory, but she had become lost after the first staircase. He crouched down, removed something metallic from his pocket and began to pick the lock. It was a skill that Elinor did not think the average antiquities dealer would have. Could she persuade him to teach her?

  They were inside faster than she would have believed possible. ‘Check the curtains,’ Theo whispered, unshuttering the dark lantern only when he was happy no chink of light would show.

  They worked their way systematically around the room, testing panels and searching cupboards, Theo opening locked drawers and relocking them. ‘How big is it?’ Elinor asked, sitting back on her heels and pushing her hair off her face.

  ‘This big, top to bottom.’ Theo held his hands about eighteen inches apart. ‘It is heavy too.’

  ‘That just leaves the floor.�
�� Elinor began to wriggle her knife blade between boards, but nothing shifted. It took twenty minutes to work across it, prizing at each long board with no result. ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Splinters?’

  ‘In the heel of my hand.’ She flapped it back and forth, muttering.

  ‘Let me see. Theo opened the dark lantern and took her hand. ‘One nasty big one. If I can just get it—hold on—there. Better suck it in case there are any little ones left.’ He lifted her hand to his mouth and sucked on the swelling at the base of her thumb.

  His mouth was hot and wet and the suction was strong and should have hurt—only instead it seemed to go straight to the pit of her belly, straight down to where that hot disturbing ache had started when he had kissed her. She looked at his bent head in the yellow light and felt a wave of fierce tenderness wash through her, so intense that she trembled.

  Elinor was not aware of placing her other hand on his cheek, of cupping it gently against her palm, only of seeing it there and of Theo turning his head into the caress. Did she kiss him or did he kiss her? How did they get here, on the wide dark boards, limbs tangled, mouths hungrily together?

  This time she knew the taste of him on her tongue, his scent familiar and arousing in her nostrils and she was aware for the first time of his body against hers, of the size and solidity against her softness, of the hard thrust against her belly that should have terrified her, but only added to the ache and the needing.

  They rolled, bumping into furniture, too intent on each other, on exploring, to care. Her breast fitted into the palm of his hand as though it had been made for it and his mouth left hers to nuzzle down over the shrouding cloth. Her nipples were hard against the friction of her chemise and she wriggled, frustrated, wanting her flesh against his, needing his mouth where his fingers were rubbing in maddeningly slow circles until she thought she would scream.