Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(62)

But as the days had progressed, the words “pawn” and “annulment” had found themselves unceremoniously thrust into the recesses of his mind. He’d watched her, of course, and had sifted through her personal effects, not without an organ-piercing stab of guilt each time. He’d located her journal and had painstakingly read every entry. All he’d managed to discover was that she was thrilled to begin reading the contents of her library and that her penmanship was surprisingly slanted and imperfect.

He frowned at his newspaper, the words blurring before him. Aside from the deficiency of her handwriting, Daisy was exactly as he’d suspected: a kindhearted, vivacious young lady who’d been mistreated by her father and had been desperate to escape him and the decrepit lecher of a match he’d chosen for her.

The most pressing task at hand for him was amassing evidence of her innocence to provide to Carlisle. The sooner he could remove Daisy as a suspect, the better. Troubling questions remained, of course. Her connection to the Irish shop girl and Padraig McGuire, chief among them. He recognized that his love for her did not exculpate her. Of course, the hardened spy within him even had to acknowledge that there was a chance she was guilty as sin after all, and he had allowed his feelings to cloud his judgment.

Either way, there was only one conclusion to the situation in which he found himself. Daisy was either guilty or she was innocent, and Sebastian was either a fool or he wasn’t.

To that end, he would continue to follow leads and build a case for Carlisle. He had every hope that they’d bring him to the inevitable conclusion that Daisy had no parts of her father’s plotting with the Fenians. That the woman he was so bloody drawn to—the woman he’d fallen hopelessly in love with against his every instinct and all his years of training combined—had no more to do with dynamite plots than the queen herself.

“Pardon the interruption, Your Grace, but you’ve some correspondence this morning,” Giles interrupted, his tone faultlessly formal.

He lowered the neglected paper and acknowledged his butler, accepting the correspondence as though it was likely as harmless as a letter from a maiden aunt. Sebastian waited until Giles had discreetly resumed his place by the sideboard before tearing open the seal of the letter. His eyes scanned the familiar, brief scrawl, that old, worn knot resurging. His blood went cold.

The message was coded, its contents seemingly innocuous enough.

Would you care to meet for a morning ride? The skies look too ominous to wait until afternoon.

It was unsigned, but that hardly mattered. He knew the note’s author just as he knew he had a pair of hands and the sun glinted in the sky above him even though he couldn’t see it from where he sat.

Carlisle wanted to meet at once.

And nothing about a sudden summons from the Duke of Carlisle was ever a matter for rejoicing.

Dread, heavy and hard and unpalatable as hell, twisted in his gut. This brief idyll with Daisy was bound to be disrupted. But damn it if he hadn’t enjoyed every moment of it while it had lasted.

The devil, it seemed, would always collect his due. He may love Daisy so much that it made his chest physically ache, but he wasn’t free to pursue that love just yet. For now, he was bound by his honor, his word, his loyalty to the Crown, and his family legacy. He felt them all like steel manacles circling his wrists. Keeping him prisoner. From the moment he’d taken his vows, his life had ceased to be his own.

Everything had changed, but just the same, nothing had.

He folded the note in thirds, carefully keeping his expression bland for the sake of the footman and butler dancing attendance on him. He should have remained in Daisy’s chamber, her body sleek and soft and warm and naked in his arms. He could have woken her with his kiss and then slid his cock home inside her.

Instead, he had risen early and dressed in customary fashion, requesting the papers and his breakfast. He had done all this because despite the fact that he would like nothing more than to pretend as if he was free to love Daisy the way he wished and the way she deserved, he was not. And lingering in her bed only prolonged his own torture and inner torment.

Ah, but if only he had stayed, kissed her sweet lips, rolled her onto her back…

But no. He supposed the note would have found him anywhere. Still, it would have been a damn sight more pleasurable to have spent the morning sucking his wife’s pretty pink nipples than reading a piece in The Times about the Government of India and the Ameer of Cabul before running off to do Carlisle’s bidding. Sebastian slid the note into the pocket of his coat, resumed breakfast for several more bites, and then announced that he would need his mount saddled while he changed into riding dress.

Yes, it was time for the devil to collect his due.





The ride to Carlisle’s personal residence was chilly, made more miserable by a ceaseless damp that had descended upon the city. For such a summons as this, his instructions were to always rendezvous at Blayton House. As they traveled in the same circles and feigned friendship as often as possible, two dukes might quite easily and inconspicuously call upon each other. More of Carlisle’s hiding in plain sight, as it were.

It didn’t take long to reach Blayton House, and before he knew it, Sebastian was handing off his reins to a groom and being led deep into Carlisle’s inner sanctum by his forbidding, hoary-haired butler. Carlisle stood upon Sebastian’s entrance to his study.

“Trent.” Carlisle was the face of genial civility. “Fancy a drink?”