He shrugged off his greatcoat and tossed it on the suit of armor on one side of the vestibule. There was a perfectly good coatrack beside the door, but Rafe always hung his greatcoat on the suit of armor. Porter had ceased bothering to remove it. Rafe saluted the shield opposite the door. It bore eighteen fleur-de-lis, symbolizing the eighteen men of Draven’s troop who had died fighting for England.
“The billiards room, Mr. Beaumont?” Porter asked.
“Not tonight.” Rafe wouldn’t have been able to hit a ball if the damn thing was right in front of his face. The French chit had muddled his mind. He’d made two wrong turns on his way from Montjoy’s ball to the Draven Club, and before tonight Rafe would have sworn he could find the Draven Club in his sleep. “I want the dining room. And I want brandy.” He gave Porter a meaningful glance. “A lot of brandy, Porter.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rafe started up the staircase, the royal-blue runner familiar and somewhat calming.
Porter followed. “Is anything the matter, sir?”
“Why should anything be the matter?”
“You don’t normally drink to excess, sir.”
“Oh, that.” Rafe reached the top of the staircase and turned toward the dining room. “There is no normal anymore, Porter. Up is down and black is white and front is back. Hasn’t anyone told you?”
“No, sir. I regret to say no one has informed me of this change.” He opened the doors to the dining room. Rafe paused in the doorway and looked down at the silver-haired man.
“Well, then I suppose the duty falls to me. Porter, it grieves me to tell you that the world as we know it no longer exists. And this new world will require much more brandy.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rafe entered the dining room, spotted his friends Neil and Jasper at one of the round tables, and made his way toward another table. He sat alone and lowered his head onto the freshly starched white linen tablecloth. The benefit of burying his face in the linen was it eradicated the lingering scent of Miss Fournay—or was it Fortier?—from his nose. He’d spent far too much time the past week trying to determine what scent clung to her before realizing it was the crisp scent of juniper in bloom.
Rafe attempted to ignore the rumble of voices at the other table. No doubt Neil, who was formerly the leader of Draven’s men, and Jasper, probably the troop’s best hunter turned bounty hunter, would try to engage Rafe at some point. Rafe intended to ignore them. If he’d wanted conversation, he would have gone home. There was always some woman loitering there, hoping to catch him and convince him to take her to bed. Rafe didn’t want company—female or male—tonight.
After what seemed like at least a fortnight, he heard Porter’s distinctive steps and then two quiet thumps of the table alerted him that a decanter of brandy and a snifter had been placed beside him on the table. The splash of liquid was music to his ears.
“You have my unending gratitude, Porter,” Rafe mumbled from the cushion of his arms.
“Thank you, sir.”
Rafe lifted his head to sip the brandy and stared into the faces of Neil and Jasper. The men had moved noiselessly across the room and taken seats at Rafe’s table. Rafe groaned, sipped the brandy, and put his head down again. “Go away.”
“Something bothering you, Beaumont?” Neil asked.
Rafe didn’t answer.
“He looks in high dudgeon to me,” Jasper drawled.
“I’m happy as a lark. Now go away.”
“So the brandy is celebratory?”
Rafe looked up. “If I say yes, will you go away?”
“No.” Neil poured two fingers of brandy for himself and Jasper. Damn Porter for bringing them snifters as well. “We’ll celebrate with you.”
Jasper Grantham sipped his brandy. He had dark blond hair and a ragged scar across one cheek. Rafe was used to the scar, but Jasper usually wore a mask to hide it when he was in public. Neil Wraxall, on the other hand, was dark of hair. He had the coloring of his Italian mother and clear blue eyes that always saw too much.
“What are we celebrating?” Wraxall asked.
“Don’t you have a wife and about two dozen children waiting for you at home?”
Neil shook his head. “I trust Mrs. Wraxall has everything well in hand.” Which was the most ridiculous statement Wraxall had ever made because his wife was a walking beacon for trouble. And Rafe should know because he’d once had to babysit a dozen orphans while Neil sorted out some sort of trouble she’d caused. And that was before she’d burned down an orphanage.
“And how are things with you, Beaumont?”
“No rum dell on your arm tonight?”
“If by dell you mean woman, Grantham, then the answer is no.”
Neil and Jasper exchanged looks. Rafe could all but read the silent conversation. Finally, Neil spoke, his voice incredulous. “This isn’t about a woman, is it?”
“A plague on the whole species,” Rafe said.
Jasper sat back and crossed his arms, his expression smug. Neil looked perplexed and confused. He leaned forward, like an eager student. “Did you compromise someone’s virginal daughter?”
“Ha!” Rafe drank again. “Nothing so simple.”
“You agreed to marry one of them. Again,” Jasper guessed.
“Hell’s teeth. I told you never to remind me of that…incident.”
“Was there another fight? Your hair looks more disheveled than usual.” This from Neil.
“It is fashionably tousled, and no. No women were fighting over me.”
“Did two of them proposition you again and you had to spend all night being pleasured by them?”
Rafe rolled his eyes. “No.”
“Tell us about that time anyway.” Jasper drank again. “I can’t remember all of the details.”
“Stubble it,” Rafe said. “This problem pales in comparison to those.”
“Is this problem a brunette?” Neil asked.
“With large…” Jasper made curving motions in front of his chest.
Rafe opened his mouth and closed it again. For the first time he realized Miss Fournay was exactly the sort of woman he preferred—beautiful, dark haired, and with ample charms. He’d been so focused on her as a mission, he hadn’t looked at her as a woman. Not that he hadn’t felt an attraction to her. When he’d been about to kiss her on the terrace, not everything he said had been pretty words designed to seduce her. He had been imagining his body pressed to hers and his mouth on hers. What man wouldn’t imagine it? Her plump lips and the straining of her bodice tonight were enough to give any man ideas.
Jasper and Neil exchanged a look. Neil mimed the hammering of a nail.
“What’s the problem?” Jasper asked. “Can’t decide whether to roger her on her back or against a wall?”
“The problem is she’s a mission,” Rafe said. He had no compunction about revealing this here. The Draven Club was entirely safe. The men could talk about anything here and it would never leave the confines of the building. “Draven himself asked me to tease information from her. She’s suspected of being in league with the French.”
“That sounds simple enough for you,” Neil said. “I gave you a score of assignments like that when we were at war.”
“Yes, but…” Rafe sipped his brandy again, then poured more. “But something is wrong with this woman.”
Jasper raised his brows. “Wrong how?”
“She rejected my advances.”
Silence hung in the air for a long, long moment and then Neil and Jasper burst out laughing. Jasper all but fell out of his chair.
“Hell’s teeth.” Rafe gathered his brandy and stood. He should have known better than to confide in those two.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Neil said, grabbing Rafe’s arm and wresting the brandy away. “I apologize. This is very serious.”
And then he and Jasper started laughing all over again.
“You think it’s so amusing? I’ll tell Draven to assign one or both of you. See how you do.”
“I won’t live through one night. My wife would murder me.”
Jasper gestured to his cheek. “I’d scare her away.”
“You couldn’t do any worse than I am.”
Neil grabbed Rafe’s arm again. “Sit down. It can’t be all that bad.”
“She tried to knee me in the groin.”
Both men flinched. “So she has some spirit,” Neil said.
“I wouldn’t have known it until now. She barely spoke before. I could have sworn the chit was tongue-tied every time she looked at me. But she had plenty to say at the ball tonight. And all of it about hedgehogs.”