Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane #3)(63)

He tilted his head toward her. “Perhaps I’ll take ye again.”

He waited like a lovesick schoolboy for her reply and it took several moments for him to realize that she’d fallen asleep. He smiled in the dark. Best she get her rest now. Still, he could not help the impulse to carefully put his arm around her and gently tilt her head so that it lay more comfortably on his shoulder.

She murmured something and snuggled into his chest.

They rode thus through the night, she fast asleep trustingly against him, he with the smell of her hair in his nostrils. He was erect and throbbing in anticipation, but oddly he was content to sit thus with her.

More than content, if truth be told.

The ride must end at last, though, and the carriage shuddered to a halt before his palace.

She stirred and looked up, her eyes suddenly wide. “Oh! I’m sorry. I must have been a terrible weight.”

“Not at all, m’love,” he murmured. “Not at all.”

He bent his head toward hers, drawn by her plump, parted lips, but the carriage door opened.

Immediately she moved away from him and he sighed. “Come inside and I’ll give ye a taste o’ some fine Spanish wine.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said as he handed her down.

“Naught but a sip, I promise ye,” he whispered into her ear.

He was so wrapped up in their gentle flirtation that it took him a moment to notice what he should’ve seen at once.

There were no guards outside the palace.

Chapter Eleven

Well, being a king was quite lovely, and for many years Clever John was happy with the arrangement. But as time went on, it became a bit… monotonous. Every morning Clever John ate his breakfast off plates of gold. He strolled his royal garden—ten times the size of his uncle’s—and then went riding about his kingdom. By afternoon he’d usually exhausted all there was for a king to do and was forced to take a nap.

So it was with more interest than trepidation that he heard the news that his neighbor had invaded his kingdom….

—from Clever John

Silence was sleepy from the carriage ride, but Michael’s sudden stillness brought her to full alertness. “What is it?”

“Get in the carriage,” he ordered quietly and drew a long, wicked-looking dagger from his sleeve.

“Michael?” she whispered. She couldn’t see anything to alarm him. The street was quiet, the moon high and full overhead. Their carriage had stopped directly in front of the palace’s nondescript door. It looked the same as usual except—

“The guards are gone,” Michael murmured. “Me palace is under attack.”

“Dear God,” Silence said. “Mary Darling—”

He turned swiftly, his eyes burning with intense emotion. “No. Don’t even think it. I’ll get her and bring her to ye alive and safe. Wait here in the carriage.”

“But—” She was suddenly filled with fear—not only for herself and Mary, but for Michael. He thought himself invincible, but he was only a man after all, made of flesh and blood and as mortal as any other.

She bit her lip, knowing that she couldn’t distract him from his task, and started for the carriage.

“No, wait,” he took her arm, halting her. “Might be this’s a diversion to separate ye from me.”

Her eyebrows drew together. Why would Michael’s enemies care particularly about her?

“Follow me close like,” Michael said, gripping her tighter for emphasis, “but not so close that ye interfere with me right arm. Understand?”

She nodded mutely, gathering her skirts in trembling hands.

He looked over her head at the coachman. “Stay behind her and guard her with yer life, ye hear?”

“Aye, Mick,” the man replied.

Then Michael opened the door to the palace.

It was dark inside, the candles that should’ve been waiting already lit, had been snuffed. The coachman retrieved one of the lanterns from the carriage and held it up high behind Silence.

The gaudy golden walls jumped out in the flickering light, the multicolored marble floor sparkling. The entry hall seemed deserted—that is until Silence noticed a smear of blood on the rainbow marble. Michael advanced swiftly and bent over the two bodies lying in the shadows behind an ornamental urn.

He straightened almost at once. “Dead.”

Silence clapped a hand over her mouth to still a cry of fear. What would the intruders do to Mary Darling?

Michael was already moving swiftly and quietly through the hall and she hurried to catch up, trying to keep the heels of her delicate embroidered slippers from tapping on the marble. Instead of taking the main, grand staircase, Michael drifted past it and pushed on a panel half-hidden in the shadows. The panel opened to reveal a narrow staircase. Swiftly he mounted the twisting steps and Silence found herself panting as she ran after him.

A minute later he abruptly halted before a small landing and another door.

“Remember to stay close,” he whispered to her and kissed her hard on the mouth.

Before she could reply he’d opened the door.

The intruders were standing immediately on the other side.

Michael lunged soundlessly and the first man fell. Two other men turned, cudgels raised, and Michael made a flurry of swift jabs and darts. Someone grunted and Silence was pushed aside as the coachman came up the stairwell behind her. She saw now that they were in a hallway around the corner from the room she and Mary Darling shared. There were a few candles lit, but the hall was mostly a mass of violent, heaving male bodies. Silence gasped as the coachman was pushed back against her. He grunted and kicked the assailant away.