“You heard him, Ginny,” del Toro said tightly, breaking into her thoughts. “Fetch the drinks.”
Imogen nodded, eager to comply, but remained trapped by the iron grip of Trenwyth’s arm about her waist.
“She stays where she is.” Trenwyth’s statement, delivered pleasantly enough, brooked no argument. Though his accent was that of the noblest of men, a cold note of steel threaded through the highborn gentility. He was a man who needn’t raise his voice to be obeyed. “She serves no one but me tonight.”
Imogen could feel her eyes widen and her lips compress in alarm as Trenwyth tugged the serving tray out of her talonlike grasp and idly handed it to del Toro.
“As you wish, Your Grace.” Her employer bowed over his large belly and snapped his fingers at the staff. He turned away without giving Imogen a second look.
She hadn’t been aware of her trembling until Trenwyth leaned forward, pressing his lips very close to her ear.
“Ginny.” The word rumbled all the way down her spine and skittered along her skin until every hair rose to vibrating attention. “That is your name?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” She whispered the lie. It was her “kitten” name. It was who she became at night in this dim, overwrought, and garish place frequented by poor bohemians, soldiers, and wealthy merchants alike. But rarely nobility. His sort had places like Madame Regina’s and other such pleasure palaces that certainly didn’t reek of absinthe and stale tobacco.
“Don’t let’s use formalities, Ginny.” He exhaled against her ear again, and she had to bite down on her lip against the strange and shivery sensations he’d elicited. “Don’t call me Your Grace again tonight, everyone else has agreed not to.”
She lowered her chin in what was supposed to be a nod. “What should I call you then?” she queried, instinctively turning her head toward him, not realizing how close it brought their lips to one another’s until they almost met.
“Those closest to me call me Cole,” he informed her mouth.
“But … I am not close to you.”
Tightening his arm around her once more, he grasped her hip with his other hand, and pulled her up his startlingly long and muscled thigh with a slow, languid move, until she straddled him as high as his leg would allow. Even through her skirts and petticoats, the movement created an unfamiliar friction against her sex that elicited an alarming but not unpleasant pressure. He didn’t stop until the curve of her bottom settled against his lap. She was aware of a surprisingly insistent cylindrical shape pressed against her. She’d worked at the Bare Kitten long enough to know exactly what it was.
“Far be it from me to contradict a lady, but I beg to differ. You and I are very close, indeed.”
Imogen hadn’t been aware how tense and inflexible she’d remained until the aching tremble of her muscles became unbearable. “I am not a lady.” She’d meant it as a statement of fact, but it escaped as a lament.
“That is precisely why I’ve picked you.” Gently, he brushed the curls of her raven wig to the side, and dropped a casual kiss on her bare shoulder as a bottle of Scotch and a couple of pristine glasses were placed in front of them.
Imogen felt that kiss with every part of her body.
“Your job tonight is to make certain I don’t see the bottom of that glass and to disagree with everything I say, can you do that, Ginny?” The good-humored manner in which he delivered his orders was underscored with something else. Something desperate and dismal.
“Disagree with you?”
“Yes,” he murmured, his eyes again arrested by her lips. “It’ll be quite novel for someone not to do everything I tell them to.”
“Of course, Your—” She caught herself in time. “Of course … Cole.” Saying his name lent even more intimacy to the moment, so she turned away and poured him a healthy glass of whisky.
“There’s a good girl,” the lieutenant called to her. “Get him soused enough to tell us where he’s off to.”
“Knowing would be your peril, not mine,” Trenwyth quipped, tossing back his drink with one great swallow. “All I can say is that Major Mackenzie is going with me.”
The lieutenant laughed. “You’re a spy, admit it,” he cried good-naturedly. “Secret missions, the matchless uniform, and they’re not letting you stay home despite…” The man seemed to catch himself before he brought up the funeral. “Despite the circumstances. I mean, you’re a duke now, dash it all.”
“I thought we weren’t discussing that.” Once again Trenwyth’s tone was deceptively mild, but the lieutenant blanched. “Besides,” the duke continued wryly. “They’re not secret missions if everyone apparently knows about them.”
“We find out after the fact,” another officer stated. “You’re gone, and then we catch wind of the assassination of a tribal warlord in the desert and you return looking quite brown claiming to have been on holiday.”
“And don’t forget!” The lieutenant was back in the conversation, encouraged by Trenwyth’s enigmatic smirk. “That time you left and the frightening business in the Alps suddenly resolved. I was told by a friend at the military hospital in Switzerland that you were treated there for frostbite just then.” He made noises as though he’d won some sort of athletic competition, receiving congratulations from his compatriots.
“I heard the Demon Highlander, himself, claim that you were just as deadly as he was and twice as skilled,” someone else jibed.
“He was being kind,” Trenwyth said modestly.
“Have ye met my brother?” Hamish asked around a tittering Devina, who’d draped herself across his lap. “He’s never kind.”