Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(19)
“She’s a lady, Carlisle. You can’t just marry her off to whomever you like.”
“She’s a pawn, and you’d be wise to remember that.” The duke’s voice was frigid as Wenham Lake ice. “Moreover, she may be dangerous. Don’t let a pretty face and a luscious pair of bubbies distract you from your main aim, Trent. I saw the way you pawed at her last night, and I know you want her, but you cannot have her. She’s poison to you. Lives are at stake. I repeat: if you cannot carry out your mission, I’ll pull you off the assignment. Briarly is more than qualified. The incident in Cheapside couldn’t have been avoided, and his record remains sterling in the eyes of the League.”
Sebastian clenched his jaw. Sterling, Briarly sure as hell was not. But he didn’t need to be taken to task or reminded of the risks they all took in the name of keeping England safe from the bloodthirsty miscreants who sought to despoil it. Nor did he appreciate being rebuked and threatened, even if part of him inwardly admitted it was deserved. He was a good spy, damn it, one of the best.
What was it about Daisy Vanreid that afflicted his mind? It wasn’t her undeniable beauty, for he’d seen and bedded his share of lovely women. Nor was it her fortune, for he possessed a formidable sum himself thanks to his father’s service to the Crown and generations of temperate investments. It wasn’t his unwanted attraction to her. Other women had made his cock hard before her. Others would after her.
What the devil was it, then? Self-disgust warred with irritation. “I haven’t given her tits a second thought,” he lied with an icy hauteur that matched Carlisle’s. He had touched them, by God, has kissed the creamy swells he’d bared in the moonlight. And they’d been softer than silk. The sort of temptation he could ill afford. The sort of temptation that thundered through his veins with a potency far more alluring than any drug or spirit.
“Daisy Vanreid is a means to an end.” The duke took a slow drag of whisky, prolonging the air of reproach that hung heavy between them in the tiny secret chamber.
“She’s been beaten by her father,” he informed Carlisle, hoping the revelation might offer an explanation for the both of them as to why Daisy Vanreid, by all accounts an untrustworthy siren potentially abetting a dangerous coterie of would-be assassins, affected him the way she did.
“According to the lady, I trust?” Carlisle’s voice dripped with derision. “Good God, man, did the fire erase all memory of training from your mind? Gaining the sympathy of your mark is one of the oldest gambits in the bloody book.”
Of course it was, but his training and his experience had both shown him how to recognize true emotion and true fear when he saw it. Fear could be capitalized upon, manipulated to gain an advantage over one’s opponent with relative ease. In Miss Vanreid’s case, her fear had only made him weak. Because something—some instinct deep in his gut—told him she was innocent. That she was ignorant of any dynamite plots and wanted no part of whatever insidious dealings in which her father was embroiled.
It wasn’t lost on him either that Carlisle would refer to the Cheapside fire in such a cavalier fashion, as though it had been nothing more than a ride in the park. Sebastian bore scars on his hands and arms that attested to that. It took every bit of the training to which Carlisle had alluded to maintain his calm.
“My training suggests her fear of her father is genuine.”
Carlisle stared at him in that penetrating, disconcerting way again. Almost as if he could read Sebastian’s mind. “Whether or not she fears her father and whether or not he beats her is irrelevant to the matter at hand. You’d do best to watch yourself, Trent. Any sign of weakness for the chit, and I won’t hesitate to pull you off this assignment.”
Sebastian held himself rigidly. Perhaps he had earned his superior’s scorn, but he couldn’t shake his gut feeling. In all his years of service, his instincts had never failed him. Still, he had no choice but to kowtow, because the thought of any other man—Briarly in particular—wedding Daisy Vanreid appalled him. “Understood, Your Grace.”
The duke nodded, seemingly mollified. “You’ll marry her tomorrow, then?”
“Yes,” Sebastian ground out with great reluctance.
Marriage to anyone, let alone to a pawn, and especially to Daisy Vanreid, did not appeal to him in the slightest. Binding himself to a woman Carlisle intended to throw into prison, a woman suspected of treason, was an intensely personal sacrifice, and one he didn’t make easily. And yet he had to acknowledge that there was some rogue part of him that wasn’t entirely sad at the prospect of shackling himself to her.
What the hell was the matter with him?
“Our plan will proceed without further alteration?”
Disgust sliced through him with the bite of a blade. He couldn’t help feeling that he was just as much of a pawn as Miss Vanreid, a chess piece maneuvered about the League’s board. It didn’t sit well with him that his every interaction with Daisy—from following her into the garden last night to proposing marriage earlier, to wedding her—had been plotted and mapped out by Carlisle like a general working out a battle strategy.
Only one part hadn’t been predetermined, and that had been the animal lust raging through him with Daisy in his arms. His desire for her was not feigned or planned. And certainly not controllable.
The duke awaited his response, so he inclined his head. “Our plan will proceed. I’m secreting her away at two o’clock tomorrow.”