Otherwise Engaged

  “Are you all right?” he said into her ear.

  “I think so,” she said. “It is certainly no worse than riding a camel.”

  He uttered an exclamation that sounded like a cross between a growl and a laugh. And then he began to move more rapidly, increasing the speed and power of each thrust until she was once again breathless, once again clinging to him for dear life.

  He drove into her one last time. Everything about him went taut, his sleek back bowed. And then he stunned her by wrenching free of her tightly stretched body. He spent himself into the handkerchief, his climax raging through him in powerful waves that seemed to go on forever.

  When it was over Benedict collapsed beside her. His eyes were closed. In spite of the discomfort and the uncertainty of the future, the sheer wonder of the moment thrilled her.

  She had just made one of life’s most mysterious journeys and discovered what lay at the end of the adventure. She knew now what it was like to take a lover.

  Seventeen

  Are you certain you are all right?” Benedict asked again.

  It was the third or fourth time he had inquired after her health and each time he sounded a little more brusque; impatient, even. They were in his carriage, heading back to Exton Street. Benedict had hustled her away from the ball immediately after the encounter in the stables. It was just as well, Amity thought. Her hair had come free of the pins and she was still picking bits of straw off her gown.

  “Do stop fretting, sir, I am quite well, thank you,” Amity said. She suspected that with each reassurance she sounded more annoyed.

  Good heavens, they were practically quarreling.

  The ending to what should have been one of the most important, most exciting and certainly most romantic nights of her life was proving to be a colossal disappointment. So much for taking a lover, she thought. If this was all there was to the business, it was difficult to fathom why so many people went out of their way to engage in illicit liaisons.

  She understood the necessity of the hasty retreat—neither of them needed any more scandal. But it was the cool, efficient manner in which Benedict had managed things that bothered her. He had arranged the departure from the Gilmore mansion with the skill and precision of a battlefield commander—no, not a military commander—an engineer. She was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he already regretted the passionate interlude.

  Now, to make matters worse, Benedict kept asking her if she was all right. It was good for a gentleman to be concerned about his lover after a heated session of lovemaking. But there did not seem to be anything the least romantic about his inquiries. He sounded worried. Perhaps he expected her to faint from the shock of the experience.

  An acute silence settled inside the cab. She kept her attention focused on the misty street scene. Gas lamps and carriage lights appeared and disappeared in the fog.

  Benedict stirred on the opposite seat. “Amity—”

  “If you inquire into my health one more time,” she said, speaking through set teeth, “I promise you I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

  In the low glow of the lamp his eyes narrowed and the hard planes and angles of his face tightened into a grim mask. “What the devil do you mean by that? It’s only natural that I am concerned about you. I did not realize that you had never experienced passion.”

  “For heaven’s sake, sir, I am not a naïve eighteen-year-old miss who had no idea what she was about tonight. How many times have I told you that I am a woman of the world?”

  “Too many times, evidently, because I believed you.”

  “I assure you I am not going to suffer a fit of the vapors just because of what happened in the stables.”

  “Just because of what happened?” he repeated, his tone turning ominous.

  “Well, it’s not as if what passed between us was anything remarkably extraordinary or revolutionary, now was it? Couples do that sort of thing quite frequently, do they not?”

  “I believe you remarked that it was no worse than riding a camel.”

  “Oh, right.” It dawned on her that perhaps she had hurt his feelings. She gave him a reassuring smile. “Not to worry, sir. One soon grows accustomed to a camel’s stride. With time and experience, the jostling and swaying become second nature.”

  Benedict looked as if he was about to respond to that comment, but fortunately the carriage came to a halt. He hesitated briefly and then, clearly frustrated and decidedly grim, he opened the door. He got out of the carriage and turned to assist Amity.

  She collected her skirts and took his hand. His fingers clamped around hers. Without a word they went up the front steps. She took the key out of the tiny evening bag attached to the chatelaine that held the tessen. Benedict took the key from her and opened the front door. The hall lamps were still ablaze but the lights had been turned off in the rest of the house. Penny and Mrs. Houston had both gone to bed.

  Amity knew a sense of relief and stepped inside. She really did not want to engage in an extended conversation with Penny at that particular moment. There would be questions about the state of her hair and the straw clinging to her gown.

  Benedict loomed on the threshold. “I will call on you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said briskly. “We must consider the new direction of our investigation.”

  He seemed to fortify himself. “Amity, I realize that tonight was not all that you expected or hoped it would be.”

  She flushed. “I would rather not discuss it.”

  “The location was hardly romantic and the timing was not good.”

  She took a tight breath. “If you are about to tell me that you regret the incident—”

  “Not entirely,” he said. “To say that I regret what happened would be a lie.”

  Not entirely. For some silly reason she was now on the verge of tears. She fought them, rallying her defenses.

  “Neither do I,” she said. She was aware that her voice sounded oddly tight. “Not entirely. And you must not blame yourself. It is my own fault that I had imagined a somewhat different experience, but in the end it was all very educational.”

  “Educational.”

  She managed a bright smile. “That is the lure of embarking on a new journey, is it not? To experience new sensations and explore the unknown? Now, if you don’t mind, I would very much like to go to bed. I find myself quite exhausted.”

  He did not move, so she was obliged to close the door gently but firmly in his face. For a moment she stood there, listening intently. Eventually she heard Benedict go down the steps. The door of the carriage opened and closed. The vehicle rolled away into the night.

  She waited a moment longer. The tears that she had managed to restrain squeezed out of her eyes. She used the back of her glove to wipe the moisture away.

  She turned down the hall lamps and went up the stairs. Penny’s door opened. For a moment Amity just looked at her, too choked up to speak.

  “My dear sister,” Penny whispered. “What has he done to you?”

  “It is not what he did to me,” Amity said. “It is that I think he wishes he had not done it in the first place. And it is, at least in part, my fault because I wanted him to do it.”

  Penny put her arms around her. Amity let the tears fall.

  Eighteen

  He could not have mangled the business more thoroughly if he had set out to do precisely that, Benedict thought.

  He had not intended to make love to Amity tonight, but he had been thinking about taking her to bed ever since he had met her. The problem was that he had not made a plan. Instead, he had acted on impulse. When the opportunity arose, he had been unable to resist. Desire was a powerful drug. And now he was paying the price.

  No worse than riding a camel.

  What did you expect? he wondered. You made love to her in a stable.

  The only thing
he could say about the matter now was that it had certainly seemed like a profoundly brilliant notion at the time.

  The carriage jolted to a halt in front of his town house. The windows were darkened. Mr. and Mrs. Hodges had drawn the drapes for the night and retired to their bed.

  Benedict opened the door, got down and sent the coachman on his way. The vehicle rumbled off into the fog.

  He took his key out of his pocket, went up the steps and opened the door. The house seemed even quieter than usual. Darker, too, he thought. All of the lights were turned down low, including those in the hall.

  He shrugged out of his coat, pausing to take a deep breath when he caught Amity’s scent. He immediately grew hard again. The aching need stirred deep inside him, stronger than ever even though he had slaked his desire once tonight. Perhaps it was because he now knew just how satisfying it was to sink into Amity’s wet, tight body.

  The coat would certainly never be the same and neither would he.

  What he needed now was a strong, medicinal dose of brandy. He slung the coat over one shoulder and went along the hall toward the door of his study. He reached up automatically to loosen his tie and then stopped, smiling a little, when he discovered that the strips of silk were still hanging around his neck. He had neglected to retie them because he had been fixed on the goal of getting Amity away from the Gilmore house before anyone noticed that she was in a state of enchanting dishabille.

  He was so consumed with the sweet, hot memories that he did not notice anything amiss until he heard an odd, strangely muffled sound coming from a dark corner of the room.

  He turned swiftly, his hand seeking the gun inside his coat. Mrs. Hodges was sitting rigidly in a ladder-back kitchen chair. Hodges was equally upright in a matching chair. Neither the chairs nor the Hodges belonged in the study at that hour of the night.

  “What the devil are you doing there in the corner?”

  Hodges made another strange noise. There was just enough light from the low-burning lamp on the desk to reveal the gag in his mouth. His hands and ankles were bound with rope. Mrs. Hodges was secured in the same fashion. Hodges stared, wide-eyed, at Benedict and made more desperate sounds deep in his throat.

  The room had been ransacked. Books had been pulled from the shelves and dropped on the floor. The drawers of the desk stood open. The pictures on the walls had been moved aside, no doubt in search of a concealed wall safe.

  “Good lord, man.” Benedict removed the gun from the pocket of his coat, tossed the coat aside and turned up the lamp. “What the hell happened?”

  The curtains shifted in the corner near the French doors. Benedict turned quickly, gun in hand.

  A man moved out from behind the heavy velvet drapery. The light gleamed on the revolver in his hand. The lower half of his face was covered by a black scarf tied at the back of his head.

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Stanbridge,” he said.

  The accent was unmistakably American. It stirred a shipboard memory. It took only a second for Benedict to put it together with the physical aspects of the intruder—slender, sandy-haired, young and male.

  “Declan Garraway,” Benedict said. He shook his head in disgust. “The expert on psychology. So you’re the spy. I should have known. I suppose the two careers do complement each other.”

  “I was afraid you would recognize me.” Declan yanked the scarf away, revealing his deceptively earnest, honest face. “It’s the accent, isn’t it? For your information, I’m not a damn spy. I’m a private investigator. Sort of.”

  “A fine distinction, I’m sure. Who are you working for?”

  “That’s none of your damn business. Where is Foxcroft’s notebook?”

  Benedict looked around the study, affecting mild surprise. “You mean you didn’t find it?”

  “Get it or so help me, I’ll—”

  “What? Shoot me and my butler and maybe my housekeeper before I shoot you? I doubt it. I’m no expert with a gun, but I have practiced a bit and at this distance it would be hard to miss. Even if you got lucky on your first shots, how far do you think you’ll get after committing several murders in a quiet, respectable neighborhood like this? Trust me, someone will have noticed you when you arrived.”

  “No one saw me come here,” Declan said quickly.

  “What about the hansom that dropped you off nearby? Do you really think the driver won’t remember that he had an American in his cab tonight? One who got out close to the scene of the killings?”

  “How did you know I came in a hansom?” Declan sounded appalled.

  “How else would you have been able to find this street? I doubt that you know London well.”

  “Forget the hansom. I’m not here to kill anyone. Your butler interrupted me as I was starting to search the place. I had to tie him up. He was going to summon the police. And then the housekeeper showed up. I had to do something. Give me the notebook and I’ll leave.”

  “You’re an idiot, Garraway. Did you really think I’d leave it lying around in my study?”

  Benedict took the small leather-bound notebook out of the pocket of his coat. He flipped it open and shut very quickly, just long enough to reveal the pages covered with cryptic notes and sketches.

  “Is that it? That little notebook?” Doubt creased Declan’s forehead. He took a step closer. “I thought it would be much bigger.”

  “Foxcroft kept his notes in a small, convenient notebook that could be carried in his pocket.”

  Benedict tossed the notebook into the low-burning fire.

  “No.” Declan dashed across the room, heading for the fireplace.

  Benedict seized a poker and swung it in a low arc that took Declan’s legs out from under him. He tumbled to the floor. The gun landed on the carpet. Benedict scooped it up.

  “Damn you, damn you, damn you.” Anguished, Declan sat up slowly and dropped his head into his hands. “You’ve ruined everything.”

  “What, exactly, have I ruined?” Benedict used the poker to draw the little notebook out of the embers. The small volume was somewhat singed around the edges but otherwise unharmed.

  “My father sent me to get that blasted notebook.” Declan watched Benedict set the notebook on the desk. “It was my last chance to prove to him that I had what it takes to join the family business.”

  “Must be a rather unusual business.” Benedict went to Mrs. Hodges and untied the gag. “Are you injured, Mrs. Hodges?”

  “No, sir,” she said.

  Benedict removed Hodges’s gag. “What about you?”

  “Only my pride, sir.”

  Benedict went to work first on Mrs. Hodges’s bindings. Declan sat on the floor and gazed morosely at the notebook.

  “Don’t look so woebegone, Garraway.” Benedict finished untying the ropes that bound Mrs. Hodges’s ankles. “That isn’t Foxcroft’s notebook. It’s one of my own personal notebooks. There is nothing of earthshaking importance in it.”

  Declan groaned. “I should have known. You tricked me.”

  “I’m afraid so. What exactly is your family business?”

  “Oil,” Declan muttered. “My father and his brother own the Garraway Oil Company. They’re getting ready to drill some wells in California near Los Angeles. They’re convinced there’s a vast quantity of oil in the ground, waiting to be pumped out. You can see the stuff seeping up from the floor of the ocean just offshore in some locations on the coast.”

  Mrs. Hodges got to her feet, massaging her wrists.

  “I’ll see to Mr. Hodges, sir,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Benedict said. He turned back to Declan. “What does Garraway Oil want with a device designed to utilize the power of the sun?” But the answer came hard on the heels of the question. “Oh, right. They don’t want to steal the design for Foxcroft’s system in order to manufacture and sell it. Your father and uncl
e want to keep the engine and the battery off the market. Is that correct?”

  “They say that if everyone can go to the local hardware store and purchase a solar system that can capture the free energy of the sun, the market for oil will collapse before there is an opportunity to prove how useful it is. My father and my uncle say the future is in oil. They want to make certain it stays that way.”

  “Because they’ve invested heavily in that future.”

  Declan shrugged.

  Benedict looked at Hodges. “You’re certain you are unhurt?”

  “Quite fit, thank you, sir,” Hodges said. “But it’s going to take some time to put your study to rights.”

  “That young scalawag made a dreadful mess,” Mrs. Hodges said. She glared at Declan. “You should be ashamed of yourself, sir.”

  Declan had the grace to hang his head.

  Benedict angled himself on the corner of his desk and contemplated Declan. “Obviously you are not aware of the latest developments.”

  “What are you talking about?” Declan asked.

  “Someone stole the Foxcroft notebook. The good news for you is that, given the fact that you came here tonight to search for it, I must assume you are not the thief.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Declan looked baffled. “It’s gone? But who took it?”

  “An interesting question. I don’t know the answer. And as you don’t appear to have the answer, either, I don’t think there’s any reason to continue the conversation. Hodges, please summon the nearest constable.”

  “With pleasure, sir,” Hodges said. He started toward the door.

  Declan stiffened in fresh alarm. “You’re not going to call the police.”

  “Why not?” Benedict asked pleasantly.

  “Because we’re both after the same thing,” Declan said, exasperated. “Look, if you’re telling me the truth when you say the notebook has been stolen—”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Then perhaps we can help each other. My father and my uncle will make it worth your while, I swear it. They are very rich.”